The Big White House
Democratic voters in Idaho actually have a choice in their May primary. A federal inmate in Texas conned his way onto their ballot alongside Hill and Obama. No cheap con artist jokes re Hill and Obama, please. Idaho Spokesman-Review:
BOISE - Three candidates will appear on the Democratic ticket for president in Idaho’s May primary this year – the two front-runners, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and a federal prison inmate from Texas.
“We got conned,” said a somewhat embarrassed Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa. Keith Russell Judd, 49, who is serving time at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution and won’t get out until 2013, qualified for the Idaho ballot by sending in a notarized form and paying the $1,000 fee. Thanks to a recent election law change that removed a requirement for collecting signatures, that was enough to put him on the ballot.
“We may rethink how we get on our presidential ballot next time,” Ysursa said. “We’ll take a look at it. We’ve got four years to think about it.”
Judd declared as a write-in candidate for president in Idaho in 2004, which simply requires sending in a declaration. He didn’t receive a vote.
Prison officials told the secretary of state’s office that Judd sent out about 14 checks to states seeking to get on the presidential election ballot, and that half of them had been returned. While he’s qualified as a write-in candidate in Kentucky, California, Indiana and Florida, it appears that Idaho is the only state where Judd’s name will appear on the ballot.
“It’s a mockery of the system, and it’s too bad that this kind of thing can happen,” said Chuck Oxley, spokesman for the state Democratic Party. He said the party is particularly miffed that Judd was able to get on the ballot, while Ysursa booted a Democratic state senate candidate in District 15, Matt Yost, because the candidate’s voter registration was in a different district.
“We have this really good candidate who can’t get on the ballot and this yahoo prisoner in Texas who coughs up a thousand bucks can,” Oxley complained.
D’you hear the one about the con artist who was running for the Democratic nomination? She tried to tell everyone she was a war hero, but the closest she ever got to combat was fighting to keep her husband away from the interns.
Ed McMahon: Ho ho ho ho!
Hey, how about that con artist who wants to be the Democratic presidential nominee! He went to grade school in Jakarta and is calling it foreign policy experience! His new vanity campaign book is called, “Everything I ever needed to know I learned in an Indonesian madrassa.”
Ed McMahon: Ho ho ho ho!
Turns out there’s a con artist who got himself on the Idaho presidential ballot. He said, those other two are rank amateurs and they’re giving the profession a bad name!
Ed McMahon: Ho ho ho ho!
Doc Severinson and the NBC Orchestra: Ba-dump-dump.
OK, enough jokes. It actually looks like Judd may have more relevant experience to be president than his rivals:
The Beaumont Enterprise reported in November that Judd, a frequent writer of letters to the newspaper, landed in prison after he was convicted of making threats on the University of New Mexico campus in 1999. He told the paper that he grew up in Albuquerque, N.M., where his father was an atomic scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and his mother taught high school English. A musician and former band member, he teaches piano to other inmates at the low-security federal prison.
So he’s been heavily involved in nuclear and social issues and the arts. Crime has been tough on him, which is a new wrinkle as political arguments go.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:08 am on Thursday, April 17, 2008
4 Responses to “The Big White House”
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April 17th, 2008 at 1:13 am
Too bad he wasn’t on the ballot for the OH Democrat primary.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Heh heh!
April 17th, 2008 at 9:35 am
(The amazing Karnak holds an envelope to his forehead)
Karnak: The answer is: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Keith Judd
(Rips open envelope and reads it… )
Karnak: Name a phony, a fibber, and a felon
April 17th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
[...] UPDATE: Jules Crittenden found the guy may not be so bad. [...]