BUNCOMBE COUNTY CENTRAL COMMITTEE MEETING

September 25, 2006

 

Present

 

                        George Keller                           Alice Keller

Chuck Durand                          Jerry Orr                        

                   Sandra Bradbury                       Bill Reynolds                 

                   Frank Kirkland                          Kathie Lack

                   Frances Cosgrove                                       

                  

Absent

 

          Nancy Day:  251-1988                         Michelle Cox:  683-4620

          Robin Ramsey:  628-3216                   Renee Russell:  684-0037

          Bill Porter:  252-4441                         Bob Long:  258-9987

          Mary Jane Westall:  254-6221              Matthew Hebb:  337-0728

          Beki Taylor:  667-8119                        Daniel Rodriguez:  628-0804

          Jennifer Styles:  667-8511         

                                     

Visitors

         

Eric Gorney

Willa Grant

 Ed Osada  

 

 

Chairman George Keller called the meeting to order at 6:35 p.m. at Ryan’s Family Steak House.  George gave the invocation and led the pledge of allegiance.  A quorum was present.

 

Minutes of the last meeting were approved as shown on the website. 

 

George introduced Willa Grant, the phone call coordinator for the upcoming election.  She is looking for volunteers to make calls from headquarters.  Chuck said the list at headquarters has voting records of each person on the list.  There are 33,000 registered Republican voters and about 25,000 have voted before.  We might want to change our criteria and start by calling those who have voted three out of the last four times, then those who have voted twice, those who have voted once, those who have voted every time and those who have never voted.  There would be less voters to deal with this way.  We need to get candidates’ names to the likely voters.  George said some precincts are being called right now by Precinct Chairs. 

 

George noted that some people will get two phone calls and everybody is getting a lot of calls from Charles Taylor.  We have the only phone number to call back on.  Headquarters is getting some nasty and obscene phone calls from Democrats.  Frank said Taylor’s campaign office is also making calls.

 

The early voting coordinator is Ralph Eubanks.  He is trying to get ten people for each voting site the whole time they are open.  George suggested bringing a chair if you plan to work.  Ralph Eubanks’ phone number is 253-6722.  George urged everyone to call and volunteer.  Jerry said his daughter applied to work inside on one-stop voting and the Board of Elections said they have more Republicans than Democrats, so they may have to use her somewhere else than Black Mountain. 

 

Willa said everybody will get two mail-outs.  She asked if there was anything being mailed out about the judges and was told there was not.  Republican candidates are funding the yellow cards, which will be passed out at polling places, and they are presently being given to anyone interested.  We would need $17,000 for another mail-out. 

 

The judges’ names will become known through the phone calls.  Many yellow cards have already been given away and George ordered 12,000 more today.  The NCGOP office is printing more of their cards to get out the judges’ names.  If people don’t know, the Board of Elections can tell them which legislature candidate is in their precinct number.  Kathie said we need to know where the lines are because she didn’t know if people would call to find out. 

 

George said he had thought about making three different cards, but that was too much trouble.  We were very successful at the Knife & Gun Show and the Fair giving away cards.  We also gave out white cards to those voters not in Buncombe County, showing their candidates.

 

George said the Kids Club will be marking all white cards for back-ups at the polls.  There will be another Knife and Gun Show on October 22-23.  Chuck said the Board of Elections printed 70,000 cards, but ours are better.  Many people believe voting machines will only count votes for early election results, but all ballots will be hand-counted.  Many did not know the scanner is a computer.  Chuck said there is much misunderstanding.  Between November 7-17, votes in certain precincts will be counted and compared to the machine count.  Chuck said the election is not over on November 7, it is over on November 17. 

 

Kathie heard from a judge’s campaign worker that judges’ names will be put on the back of the ballot.  Poll workers need to tell voters about that.  Sample ballots are online.  No candidates are listed as incumbents.

 

Jerry said if a voter improperly fills out a ballot and it displays as mis-marked, one has the choice of getting it back or sending it on.  If goes through, Jerry asked how the hand count will accommodate a checkmark that did not read and compare with what the machine read.  George replied that the intent of the voter is what is being looked for.  He is very optimistic about our Board of Elections and feels they are good people. 

 

Frances said she will volunteer to be a counter.  Counters will count rejected ballots.  George said if one does not vote for every category, the machine will tell you that you under-voted.  If you over-vote; e.g., vote for two people in the same office, you can still send the ballot on and neither vote will count.  If you want the ballot back, you get a new ballot and start over again.  No one was sure what will happen to the first try, but felt they would be kept.  Security of the paper is on everybody’s mind.

 

George has been listening to many people talk about the website controversy.  He had hoped Mark Crawford would clear up the remaining problems, but thought he made it worse.  The fight with Bruce Goforth on the radio Friday cements the thought that the whole thing was just to get back at Goforth.  This might have died back down but the battle with Goforth changed that.  George has other things to do and will tell Mark to square it up with Matt Mattan this Thursday or George will disown him.

 

Bill said he is not too happy with what Tim Peck had to say.  Kathie said she had talked to Tim and found he was trying to do us a favor.  He said he felt like the whole thing was getting deeper and somebody had to try and get some answers out, but they did not answer Tim’s questions.  Bill said Mattan said something about taking a bath and Tim agreed with him. 

 

Frances asked what happened.  George replied that Tim was a little abrasive.  He said he represented some organization he made up.  Chuck said that would not do any good and asked why Tim would construct something.  Chuck felt that just made all of us look awful.  George said an organization doesn’t not exist just because someone cannot find it in some Government records.  We can have lots of friends unknown to the Government.  Anybody should be able to get together and put something on the web.  That is still one of our basic freedoms.

 

Bill said Mattan made him angry.  It sounded to him like Mattan’s bosses at Clear Channel were giving him directions on his responses.  Kathie thought Mattan had been very insulting.  George said since the website work was not for the BCGOP, he charged Mark for it.  George has never charged the 11th District, Buncombe County or River Link for those websites.  Jerry thought Mattan’s entire argument is an attack and has nothing to do with questions asked or responses made.  Mattan did not seem to be interested in that.  He was interested entirely in attacking George and the Republicans.  George said we will have to get very confrontational and if Mattan does not stop, the time will come to stand up and leave.

 

Eric thought maybe we should apologize.  Most everyone else present disagreed.  Chuck noted that Mattan has insulted Eric, but Bruce Goforth can do no wrong on Mattan’s show.  Bill said Mattan cut Mike Harrison off when he called himself a candidate.  Many people present wondered why we listen to Mattan’s show and felt he advertises for the Democrat Party. 

 

Ed said Mattan preaches continuously about people re-registering to become Independents.   Chuck felt Independents are parasitic.  They want to sit in the middle and take good deeds from both sides.  Independents take credit for the good from both sides then attack both sides for the evil either side does.  Ed asked why Mattan is doing this and George replied Mattan’s goal is building listenership.  Bill thought Mattan is playing both sides to get listeners.  George remarked that fair and balanced is usually not fair.

 

Chuck said we have 75 precincts.  He has to go to the Board of Elections on October 2 with 75 individual sheets listing poll workers and judges.  Right now he has 11 sheets.  Three came from our 52 Precinct Chairmen and eight are from 23 judges where we have no Precinct Chairs.  Most judges will be serving the second part of their 2-year term this election.  Ten percent of those judges do not feel that commitment.  We have to call every judge and confirm with them.  In a couple of precincts we will serve as the Chief Judge because Democrats cannot fill those spots. 

 

Bill asked if the Democrats are getting hurt by what’s going on in Raleigh.  Chuck said no.  Up until last November’s election the Buncombe County Board of Elections told Precinct Chairmen how many clerks they wanted, and a judge, based on an estimated percentage of registered voters they expected to vote.  About two weeks before the election they decided it would be a more spirited election than they had counted on, so they put out a request for each precinct to add clerks. 

 

Chuck said we talked many people into working because they needed them.  Names were sent to the Board of Elections, which then decided they would be over budget if they used these extra people, so they disregarded it.  We had many people expecting to work who never got called.  Now when we ask them, they do not want to work. 

 

The Board of Elections decided to stop anticipating the voting level.  They no longer say how many workers they need in each precinct.  Now they say to give them as many as we have, prioritize the names and they will call whoever they see fit.  People are not responding very well to that.  The first election there was 68% response, the next election 52% response, now it’s around 10-11% response.  Chuck does not know what we are going to do.  He has been calling everybody he can and telling them to put three clerks on their list. 

 

Chuck thanked all the clubs for their help with the picnic.  Everything was contributed and he had great help from the clubs.  It was a very enjoyable afternoon.  George added his thanks to Chuck for coordinating the picnic.  Fifty-six people attended and some were new, interested Republicans.

 

Kathie said Judge Rusty Duke stopped by at the Gun Show and left letters from the NRA endorsing him.  He asked Kathie to pass them out to every gun shop, pawn shop and gun show in the area.

 

The meeting adjourned at 7:35 p.m.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Sandra Bradbury, Secretary

Buncombe County Republican Executive Committee