Video: Shep Smith interviews Alvin Greene’s accuser

She seems credible, which fills me with heart-ache. Can “America’s candidate” really be a dirty, dirty lech? Watch to the end or you’ll miss her mom describing where, precisely, the incident happened. Initially I thought she and Greene were attending the same college and had a chance encounter in the computer lab. Not quite, not quite.

Apparently three teams of experts are going through the ballots in the Democratic primary to look for anomalies that might explain Greene’s win. They’ve already found something strange — Greene did superbly well among election-day voters but Vic Rawl, his opponent, destroyed him among absentee ballots. Is that really so strange, though? Apparently, both men had virtually zero name recognition. If you assume that absentee voters might be slightly better informed than election-day voters since they can research the candidates on their computers before voting, it stands to reason that Rawl did well among them. But in that case, why didn’t he and Greene at least break even among election-day voters? One theory is that Greene’s name came first alphabetically so most voters simply went with that; another is that black voters recognized that “Greene” with an “e” at the end is usually (but not always) an African-American name and opted for Greene on that basis. The only problem? Statistical analysis shows practically no correlation between Greene’s support and heavily minority districts. He did almost as well in white counties as black ones. Does that mean … the alphabetical theory really is the correct one? Dude?

An intriguing footnote from the Politico story about experts scrutinizing the ballots: “In Spartanburg County, Ludwig said there are 25 precincts in which Greene received more votes than were actually cast and 50 other precincts where votes appeared to be missing from the final count.” Did Greene rig the vote? He’s clearly a man with friends in high places!

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