They're not contesting the results, but Barack Obama's presidential campaign wants Nevada Democrats to investigate whether Hillary Clinton's precinct captains broke caucus rules.
Robert Bauer, Obama's general counsel, writes in a letter to NV Dem chair Jill Derby to "conclusively and clearly" address what he terms a "disturbing pattern of incidents" that took place last Saturday.
Specifically, Bauer claims that the official Clinton precinct chair manual falsely stated that the doors to the caucus site be closed at 11:30, when, in fact, anyone still in line to register by 11:30 would be allowed in. The consequence was that many Obama supporters who followed the rules didn't get to caucus. (The Clinton campaign has noted, in response, that their manual makes clear that Democrats in the queue could still participate and have said the rest of their manual followed the letter and spirit of caucus rules.)
Bauer also details what he terms "voter supression" efforts by Clinton precinct captains. He writes that the campaign receieved more than 1,000 separate complaints.
There's no question that the Obama campaign is genuinely disturbed -- as is, by the way, the Clinton campaign, whose volunteers also recorded several hundred episodes of ne'er do-welling by Obama supporters and by the Culinary Local 266 in particular.
If the party investigates, the story of the shenanigan-filled caucuses stays alive.
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If the party investigates, the story of the shenanigan-filled caucuses stays alive...
...as does the story of whiny ("Tell Bill Clinton to stop lying about my record!"), sore loser Obama.
Posted by Jasper | January 23, 2008 4:21 PM