Harrop Will Continue to Challenge for GOP Chair
Philip Marcelo of the Projo has just tweeted that…
Outgoing #RI GOP chair @markzaccaria confirms @DanHarrop challenging party’s decision to award chairmanship to @RIGOPMarkSmiley.(Yesterday, the State GOP issued a press release, stating that the discrepancy between the number of delegates registered to vote and the number of votes counted on Thursday night had been resolved and declared Mark Smiley the winner of the election, based on his one-vote margin over Daniel Harrop)…
Mark Zaccaria, outgoing Chair of the Rhode Island Republican Party, today announced the results of detailed investigations into the voting questions that caused last Thursday’s election for his successor to be called into question. “The problem was that our source documents from the double check-in for voting showed one less ballot issued than we had in the stack we counted.” He said.
Subsequent review of those same documents and corroborating statements from all concerned have positively identified the one eligible voter who was correctly issued a ballot but whose name did not receive the second check mark to correctly indicate that he had been issued a ballot, Zaccaria asserted.
There is no way this guy can lead the party with one vote. A new election is a necessity.
And if your man Harrop wins by 1 do we run 2 out of 3? Having the loser fight over a non-paying job is pathetic. The guy needs to get over it and get a life. He is providing a very poor example of how to move the party forward.
The question was never if a person was leading or not by “only one vote,” it was whether more ballots were actually cast than eligible voters present. It was determined afterwards that all votes were cast by eligible voters.
You don’t get a do-over just because the margin ended up being only one. Clearly no one in this election got a “mandate” to do anything radical and I think that is well understood by everyone.
As for any challenge, you’re talking about trying to overrule the “ruling of the chair.” Due to the discretion that the RIGOP bylaws give the chairman, while I’m sure it will get a fair and likely loud hearing, I wouldn’t expect it to go anywhere. One way or another, there are going to be sore feelings.
Being reported at WPRO: “Dr. Dan Harrop has sent out an email calling Mark Smiley and his supporters bigots. Smiley defeated Harrop in the election for a new RIGOP chair by one vote.”
Pathetic sore loser.