D.D. 12/15/05

The Shelby County Election Commission has changed their tune in regard to the special election held last September between Republican Terry Roland and Democrat Ophelia Ford, holding a press conference indicating that voter fraud will be looked into to the fullest extent that the law allows. Shelby County Election Commission Chairman Greg Duckett even speculated that the operation may be an inside job, because the operation played on the Election Commission's inability to recognize recently deceased voters. That wouldn't be surprising.

You'll remember much criticism was made back in September of the Shelby Co. Election Commission's decision to certify the election results immediately following the ballot-casting, despite Roland's repeated calls for recounts and legal challenges, even before the Election Day. In fact, you'll remember that the vote was certified along party lines for the first time in memorable history and according to some reports, certain members of the Election Commission itself purposefully didn't show up to a meeting proported to investigate the voter fraud charges. Even as late as Monday of this week the Election Commission was dismissive about a change in the election's outcome, calling the cited evidence of voter fraud "isolated."

Now that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has been called into to investigate the charges of fraud, I wonder if the Election Commission has realized the gravity of the charges and certainty of the evidence. It's possible that the Ford family patriarch, Harold Ford Sr. now realizes that-- he called the Commercial Appeal to dispell rumors that the Ford family funeral home actually made the arrangements for the funerals of the two dead people revealed earlier in the week by the Commercial Appeal to have voted in the election. That rumor is not true, but it even scared his son, Harold Ford, Jr. who is running for the U.S. Senate in 2006, who called his dad about it, according to the Commercial Appeal article.

Immediately following the election, I was less than optimistic that we would ever really know what happened in the special election that saw Ophelia Ford elected by a mere 13 votes, but now finally some light does seem to be coming to the claims of voter fraud touted by the Roland campaign all along. Finally.