Official Koster win over Donnelly: 780 votes
The Associated Press recently moved a story underscoring the official, final tally in Missouri’s historic razor-thin vote for the Democratic nomination for attorney general.
The upshot: “Chris Koster’s margin narrowed, but only slightly, as official election results from the Democratic attorney general primary show he won by 780 votes.
“Runner-up Margaret Donnelly, who lost by just 0.2 percentage points, already has said she plans to ask for a re-count. She has seven days to formally request that all 346,465 ballots cast in the Aug. 5 Democratic attorney general primary be re-counted.
“The secretary of state’s office on Thursday certified the results from the election. In the official results, Donnelly picked up six votes on Koster.”
MEANWHILE, in the GOP contest for governor:
“…Sarah Steelman picked up 37 votes on Kenny Hulshof, but she still lost by more than 17,000 of the more than 755,000 votes cast in that race. Hulshof advances to face Democratic Attorney General Jay Nixon in the November general election…”
As the story explains:
Re-count requests are directed to the secretary of state, but local election authorities pay for and re-tally the number of ballots cast for the candidates. The secretary of state has 20 days after a re-count is requested to certify the election totals for a second time.
Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat, said Thursday that every ballot cast would be re-counted. When possible and if voter intent is obvious, the ballots will be run through optical scan readers. If there is any question of a voter’s choice, the ballot will be set aside and examined by a bipartisan team.
Various Democrats have sent Political Fix the historical record on recounts in Missouri, which have overwhelmingly failed to change the basic results of who won and who didn’t.
But Donnelly allies note that, nationally, there have been a few exceptions to that rule.
By the way, the AP also reported Thursday that the Missouri Ethics Commission still has before it some formal complaints filed against Koster over his money-raising practices.
But Koster spokesman Danny Kanner said the candidate expects those complaints to get tossed out, since they mirror earlier complaints that the commission dismissed a few weeks ago.
If Donnelly is going to recount, I hope she does it immediately. Like today. If she is not going to ask for the recount, she should come out today and endorse Koster. All she is doing with this circus is helping Gibbons and Hulshof. It is time to show some class. I can totally respect fighting to the end but sometimes life if about showing class when you do not win.
She is entitled to the recount so don’t make her seem like a bad person for doing it,
The imposter is not to be trusted. He ducked the deabtes with Harris and Donnelly. He never explained why he voted to kick 100,000 off health care or for MOHELA, voter id and the Blunt agenda. He squeaked by with a third of the vote by spending far more money than any of the other candidates. He has numerous ethical problems.
I will unhappily vote for Gibbons because we have to stop Koster.
Something doesn’t make sense.
In the article about this done by the associated press Koster’s spokesperson and Chuck Hatfield says they weren’t aware that this complaint was still out there.
Either Koster and Hatfield are mistaken or lying or the ethics commission has messed up. Misouri law requires the commission to send the complaint to the alleged violator. When a complaint is dismissed the law also requires the commission to notify the alleged violator. If the ethics commission did their job and that is a big if, Koster and Hatfield should have known there were still pending complaints.
If you want to check out the law it is at
http://www.moga.mo.gov/statutes/C100-199/1050000957.HTM
There must be an explanantion for this but I don’t get it. Something doesn’t make sense.
Just wondering
It makes perfect sense. Koster and Hatfield lied because they didn’t want the complaint hanging over their heads while they were raising money this month.
Koster will do anything to get elected.
When there were so many complaints filed simply for political reasons, wouldn’t it be easy for a candidate to hear that “the complaints were dismissed” and not realize that there was more identical ones that actually hadn’t been ruled on?
The direct quotes from the Ethics Commission officials made it sound like they had heard and dismissed everything.
Whatever the case, watch these ones get dismissed as well, because they are nothing but cheap political tactics to try to throw mud around that doesn’t exist.