Asst DC Mayor Involved In Sub-Prime Mortgage Fraud

http://district-of-criminals.blogspot.com/2008/07/dc-deputy-mayor-neil-alberts-conflict.html

Darn, I missed the deadline! Remember to write me in folks! I may have to return to run the Yoyodyne Corp. until the next election.

John Smallberries, DC Councilman Candidate, AT LARGE

Does anybody really care about the 2008 local elections?

Incumbents Band Together to Drive Challenger Off Ballot

Shadow Senator Mike Brown and former Shadow Senator Florence Pendleton have thrown their names and reputations behind incumbent Shadow Senator Paul Strauss in the bureaucratic battle that is ballot access in DC. Each signing their names (reportedly site unseen) to identical 220 page challenges filed with the Board of Elections and Ethics to the nominating petitions of long time activist Phillip Pannell, Strauss's last and only challenger. Most egregious are the claims of fraud leveled at Pannell, a veteran of elected office himself. Brown and Pendleton are charging that Pannell falsified signatures on his petitions and that while the signers might be qualified registered voters, someone else signed their names. How the two made that determination is anyone's guess (having not read the challenge and all).
The challenges to Pannell are fraught with the piling on tactics commonly used to bury opponents in paperwork and designed to make refuting the challenges an administrative impossibility. The fraud charges are particularly cumbersome. What's a candidate to do? Run all over town and gather sworn statements - "Hey, BoEE! It's really me!" The result, District voters are left with the candidates most able to weave their way through BoEE's obstacle course of regulations. Once over the first hurdle, challenged candidates are forced to rely on BoEE's notoriously inaccurate and out of date records.Pannell, with more than 1000 of his signatures being challenged must either beat his way to BoEE to use the two computers with voter records on them (volunteers in tow) or he must find someone at BoEE to get him the cd with the records so his supporters can work through the weekend, a tough task with the responsible staffer out of the office.
So Strauss' folks found the time to go through more than three-thousand signatures and levy charges at more than half. Did you know that if they can't read your signature, it's invalid? (Can you imagine that standard at your pharmacy?) While it's reasonable to bar signatures that aren't from "qualified" voters, it's unreasonable to leave that determination up to folks with a vested interest to find errors. If BoEE would just appoint a committee to review petitions and make an impartial determination as to whether a candidate has met the threshold, it would save candidates all the hoop jumping and voters all the petty inside baseball that leaves them to throw their hands up in exasperation.
And that's exactly what Strauss and company are hoping Pannell will do - give up with befuddled exasperation at the ridiculousness of it all. What possible explanation could Mike Brown have for signing a document that challenges the validity of his own signature?