Kyle Wilson replies

In today's morning take, Blois Olson reports on the email he received from Kyle Wilson in response to his reporting on Friday that Wilson used to be a Republican organizer.

Do you want the long answer or the short answer? The short answer is that I am not a Republican anymore and do not support the party. I consider myself pretty progressive these days actually and I would say that Bernie Sanders matches my views the closest out of any sitting politician.

If Kyle says he's a Democrat - and if he is claims to be most similar to Bernie Sanders that technically makes him a socialist - then I take him at his word.

I do, however, think that it's disingenuous to fail to disclose beforehand that he used to be a Republican. This is the point I made in the comments of my post on Friday in response to this comment from fellow contributor EricF:

Candidate in SD61 DFL primary has a GOP past

It appears as though Kyle Wilson, a candidate in the DFL primary to replace the state Senate seat vacated by Linda Berglin, has a curious political history. From this morning's take, by Blois Olson (if you're not a subscriber go here):

A Republican tipster has informed morning take that SD61 candidate Kyle Wilson, who is running as a DFLer, has been a GOP supporter and operative since 2004 and as late as 2010.

Blois provides a few bits of linky proof, this article from MNDaily in 2004:

"It's really nice to be the best College Republican organization in the nation," said Kyle Wilson, a University sophomore who was made the club's state technical director. "You really feel like you're making a difference."

And there's the above photograph of Kyle at an Elephant Club event. The outfit tells the whole story, the brown jacket and black turtle neck, only Republicans (excluding Marcus Bachmann) have fashion sense like that! None of which quite vibes with this statement from Kyle's campaign announcement:

I want to be a strong advocate for progressive change in Minnesota.

Sure you do Kyle, sure you do.

Additional Prosser votes are not that suspicious

News that some 14,000 additional votes had been added to the totals of conservative Waukesha County, netting David Prosser an additional 7,500 votes, was met with quite a bit of skepticism, esspecially considering County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus spotty history and refusal to follow state procedures.

None of this means that mistakes can't happen though, and anyone who has been following Minnesota elections for the last few years should know that unofficial results are just that, until a vote total is certified by the proper authority we can't be certain of the numbers.

I began working on this post this morning and because of the obligations of life some sports guy from the New York Times posted something very similar before I could finish. Undaunted, (or more accurately, not wanting to waste all the words I'd already written and charts I'd already made) I will post this thing anyway.

What I want to do is take a look at what these 14,000 additional votes mean in the grand scheme of things. For this analysis I'm going to use the number of registered voters from the 2010 midterm elections as the baseline to see what the turnout numbers looked like for all the counties in the Supreme Court election.