I just received an e-mail from the Charlie Brown campaign asking for donations to their "Election Protection Fund". Since the readership here is much wider than any of my personal e-mail lists, I'm posting it as a diary. (I hope that doesn't violate too many rules, and draw the ire of the diary police.)
As you are probably aware from the front page storyupdates, there are less than 500 votes separating Brown (D) from McClintock (R). And McClintock is trying to pull the typical republican stunt of tossing out votes to win an election.
The key message of the e-mail it this:
Yesterday, Tom McClintock hired an election attorney and brought in
a team of lawyers to "watch" the locations where absentee and
provisional ballots are being counted.
With McClintock's massive fundraising list, he has the financial
ability to hire as many lawyers as he needs to challenge the votes of
thousands of people who faithfully cast their ballots.
We need to combat this, but that takes resources.
Full e-mail below the fold:
A record number of voters turned out for Tuesday's election.
And, after more than 300,000 ballots were cast in CA-04, the race is tied. The current difference stands at less than half of 1% (less than 500 votes).
The race is way too close to call. And there are more than 40,000 vote-by-mail and provisional ballots still to be counted.
Once all the votes are tallied, we are confident that Charlie Brown will be the 4 th District's next Congressman, but we need your help to make sure every vote is counted.
Please Contribute to our Election Protection Fund.
Yesterday, Tom McClintock hired an election attorney and brought in a team of lawyers to "watch" the locations where absentee and provisional ballots are being counted.
With McClintock's massive fundraising list, he has the financial ability to hire as many lawyers as he needs to challenge the votes of thousands of people who faithfully cast their ballots.
We need to combat this, but that takes resources.
Please click hereto make a donation to help us fight for every last vote.
McClintock has history with recounts, and was on the short end of a fight with Steve Westly in 2002 after a similar situation, so we know he's going fight.
But rest assured that we will not give up - we will not surrender - we will not rest until we make sure that every single vote is counted.
Please donateright now to ensure a fair process to count the remaining votes.
Many of us have looked forward to this post-election day for such a long time - as a country we are headed in a new direction, with so many new and excited voters participating in the process, we cannot afford to allow new voters to become disenchanted with the system already.
We all remember what happened the last time a right-wing politician started challenging election results. Your additional contributionof $25, $50 or whatever you can afford will go a long way to helping prevent a repeat of history.
Thank you,
Todd Stenhouse
Campaign Manager
P.S. - Please contributetoday, and forward this email to friends, neighbors, family and all those interested in maintaining the integrity of our electoral process.