Things were going well in KY-03 this morning--it was hoped that the most eventful thing we'd be seeing today was a horse-race between John Yarmuth and Anne Northup that would rival the Kentucky Derby or Breeder's Cup for excitement.
Unfortunately, it looks like it wasn't exciting enough for some--including a poll worker who apparently tried to rough up a voter for not marking the judicial candidate side of his ballot.
Even in Kentucky politics, trying to beat the hell out of a voter for not marking all the ballots is just a little extreme. More below...
Pretty much every media source here in Louisville is now covering this story--including
WHAS-11,
WAVE-3 and
the Louisville Courier-Journal; WHAS-11 seems to have the most current info on the subject (which is now being carried on the Associated Press newswire), so I'll note their coverage:
A poll worker in south Louisville was arrested Tuesday morning and charged with assault and interfering with an election.
Jeffery Steitz, 42, of Louisville allegedly grabbed a voter by the neck after a dispute over the ballot, said Lt. Col. Carl Yates of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.
The dispute started at about 9:30 a.m EST at a UAW hall serving as a polling place in south Louisville. The voter told Steitz he did not want to vote in a judicial election because he didn't know enough about the candidates, Yates said. Steitz told Miller he had to vote in the race, Yates said.
The dispute escalated with Steitz grabbing Miller by the neck and throwing him out of the polling place, Yates said.
"The poor guy went back in and he threw him out again," Yates said. "At least it wasn't over a Democrat or a Republican being on the ballot."
Paula McCraney, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Clerk, said election officials called the police and when an officer arrived, the voter wanted to file charges.
"That about tops off the day," McCraney said.
A call to Steitz's home was not immediately returned.
Yikes. O_o And we thought the worst we'd have to worry about was
Frank Simon's usual bag of dirty tricks!
We were not expecting the kinds of thuggery you'd expect in--say--Ohio; and especially not over the judicial candidates (which don't show the party affiliation in the ballots, and until this year weren't allowed to note party affiliation at all). In today's ballot, there were a ton of judicial candidates across Jefferson County (this is not only a big US Congressional election, but also a mayoral and county government election)--unless one had done research, you probably wouldn't know a lot about who was running.
In fact, about the only group I know of that endorsed anyone for the judicial races was Frank Simon's AFA-KY (and its associated Freedom's Heritage Forum)--and that was only on contested races (and we did have a few uncontested judicial races).
So, even in regular voter-intimidation terms, this is a little bit bizarre.
Now, the precinct in question does--despite the use of a UAW meeting hall--tend to go red; it's one of the closest precincts to the dominionist megachurch I escaped from, and a fair number of the church members live in that precinct. (Frank Simon's groups also effectively are run out of the megachurch in question, especially as far as GOTV and dirty tricks go.)
As it is, the South Side of Louisville--also the part of metro Louisville which tends to go "red" the most--is being seen as particularly crucial (sorry, vid in WMV format, if anyone wants to Youtube this be my guest) and Northup losing this area--or the Republicans losing this area in general--could be quite fatal for the party this year. (And yes, this includes "Republican-friendly judges".)
No good information is out on Steitz' party affiliation (in KY, they are required to have an equal number of D and R poll workers), but at any rate, this is not the kind of news we wanted to hear out of KY-03.
* * *
In lighter news, it does seem that the news media is confirming firsthand reports from Kossacks here of heavy voting volume in KY-03; reportedly 43 percent of registered voters are expected to be voting, based on polling which is comparable to a Presidential election in this state; voter turnout is expected to be 50-55% for KY-03 in particular.