Tag Archives: Election 2004

The Surreal Politics of Orange County: Is the GOP Machine Trying to Steal This Election?

This morning, Janet Nguyen’s lawyers may go to court to stop certification of Tuesday’s supervisorial election. They intend to question the accuracy of the electronic voting machines here and the Registrar of Voter’s determination on some of the provisional ballots cast. Though it’s far from certain that as many as seven votes can be switched, Team Janet remains confident: (From OC Register)

“We have an excellent chance of getting seven votes switched,” said Dave Gilliard, Janet Nguyen’s campaign consultant. “At seven votes, I think the race is still very much up in the air.”

OK, so Gilliard may be your typical GOP consultant. And Janet might not be the most sympathetic of candidates. But still, follow me after the flip and I’ll show you how this race is still “very much in the air”. That air, after all, may be quite stinky…

Already, it looks like Janet has hired noted election lawyer Fred Woocher to present her case in court. If Woocher’s name sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because you still remember Donna Frye’s first run for San Diego Mayor in 2004. Though Frye had actually won a plurality of votes that November, she was denied her victory because some 5,551 of those Frye voters had forgotten to fill the oval after writing in her name. Though similar undervotes were allowed to be counted for incumbent Mayor Dick Murphy, the same courtesy was not given to undervotes for Donna Frye. In turn, this threw out enough votes to give Murphy another term…
Until he had to resign.

But I digress. This time around, Woocher be worrying about more than just unfilled ovals. This time, it will be also be about the voter fraud.

While taking out my garbage about a week and a half ago, I was approached by three Vietnamese men who spoke to me in Vietnamese. In their hands were absentee ballots, not requests, but ballots. They tried to hand one off to me and asked me to fill in the bubble for Trung Nguyen sign the envelope and they would take care of the rest. I told them no I am not supporting Trung, and added that what they were doing was wrong and illegal. They insisted they were doing nothing wrong and were trying to help the Vietnamese community and that Trung Nguyen was the only one who cared about the Vietnamese community. I told them again I am not supporting Trung Nguyen and what they were doing was illegal. They moved on to the next home. I noticed they were at my mobile home park everyday, same three men with stacks of absentee ballots.

I informed Vietnamese radio about what was going on. They did a report on it. It was also reported to the DA’s office. I believe the District Attorney is investigating. I do hope they find wrongdoing.

However, Trung Nguyen and his Van Tran cronies “allies” are quite quick to denounce all of this as just Janet being a “sore loser“. They would rather just see Janet “concede gracefully”, even though there are still all these questions about this election that have yet to be answered. Oh yes, and apparently Janet Nguyen is the “New Al Gore”. (From OC Register)

Trung Nguyen, meanwhile, spent Thursday making plans for serving as supervisor. He toured what he believes will be his new office on the fifth floor of the Orange County Hall of Administration and his campaign warned Janet Nguyen that she may look like former Vice President Al Gore when he desperately tried to reverse the 2000 presidential election.

Michael Schroeder, Trung Nguyen’s lawyer, said he believes Janet Nguyen will fail to stop the election certification because she didn’t meet a Thursday deadline to get a court hearing.

“She has the prospect of becoming the next Al Gore, being seen as a sore loser,” said Trung Nguyen’s lawyer, Michael Schroeder.

Oh, really! So if someone wants to ensure that the entire election process was valid, then that person is a “sore loser”? Would Trung Nguyen and his sugar daddy “lawyer” Mike Schroeder be saying the same if Trung were the one only seven votes behind? Would these folks be saying the same if Trung were possibly the victim of a massive fraud operation to get his GOP machine-backed opponent elected AT ANY COST?

And oh yes, does Mike Schroeder really want to bring back all the memories of the 2000 Presidential Election? Does he think that we forgot about what REALLY happened in Florida? Oh, but I guess the GOP machine never learns. They’ll do ANYTHING to win, even against a fellow Republican…
Oops, but I forgot that Janet Nguyen is just a “sore loser”.