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Ted Stevens Loses Senate Re-Election Bid
JakartaDean writes "Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, famed Internet regulator, has lost his Senate seat. The AP is reporting that 'Stevens was declared the loser in Alaska on Tuesday night after a two-week-long process of counting nearly 90,000 absentee and early votes from across Alaska. With this victory, Democrat Mark Begich (the mayor of Anchorage) has defeated one of the giants in the US Senate by a 3,724-vote margin, a stunning end to a 40-year Senate career marred by Stevens' conviction on corruption charges a week before the election.' It's probably too early to tell what this means for Internet regulation, but at least there's a > 0 chance that the next committee chair will understand something about the Net."
Well, the local vote doesn't rest so much on the personal qualities of a candidate so much on his ability to bring pork to his district. Having been convicted on things like having a piece of furniture in his home won't impress votes who depend on the pork for their jobs that much. And from what little I drained from the tubes on the topic, Mr. Stevens was an expert at getting quality output from them pork tubes.
Besides, he doesn't stand alone, and it dozen't only happen in the US. In Japan a few years back an MP got convicted, did jail time, got out and got promptly re-elected, despite the national media turning him into a sort of laughingstock. Similarities: he was from the northern, relatively unpopulated and cold part of Japan, and he was a "pork expert".
So, it is either the pork, or the ice. You decide.
a) Fraudulent ballots are being added for the Democratic candidate in the midst of the recount.
b) For whatever reason, more valid democratic ballots went uncounted during the first counting.
Since recounts are heavily observed by both sides, I find option a to be unlikely. To be perfectly accurate however, the Alaska race was never recounted - they just finished counting all the ballots (absentee and so on take longer) for the first time. Despite this, given the closeness of race, I find it hard to believe that election monitors for either side would have been so incompetent as to allow the level of fraud that you suggest.
They're at least somewhat orthogonal I thought? I'm not American so sometimes I can have really skewed views of how things work down there, but I don't see either as junior to the other. They have a very different set of responsibilities and privileges.
Regarding why she'd want to run... from up here I'd heard some rumblings about how Palin might have some executive experience, but a stunning lack of information about the rest of the country. Said persons then went on to suggest that some senate experience would be good for her if she wants to be involved in the 2012 race, get her some additional exposure out-of-state and some experience in Washington(being a maverick outsider renegade is all well and good, but some knowledge of how things work in Washington isn't entirely bad).
I'm not sure how many millions of Americans this would carry weight with, but these two seemed to think it'd be a splendid idea.
If he was forced out of office in disgrace he would be replaced by another less obviously disgraceful Republican. At least I hope that's what happened, although after seeing who they elected Governor I could be giving Alaskan's too much credit.
Funny you should mention that. Even though his replacement would be chosen by special election and appointed, the consensus in the punditocracy was that Palin would run for the seat and probably win.