[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by transplant99

If you believe shaking hands outside a polling station, and forming a coalition in a power grab with a party you specifically said you wouldn't just weeks earlier, are comparable... then i guess you could use such an analogy.

They're only comparable in that neither is an existential threat to our democracy. I should think that was relatively clear.

Do you honestly think this is what won the election though?? Really?

Heck no. That would be crazy. Good thing that isn't what I said--what I actually said was "bending the rules to win an election" is tacky.

And for the record, Hinman didn't know he would win--his own polling had him running in third place just a short while ago. So his agenda in doing this was clearly to get more votes--which is natural enough. However, if he's right outside the polling place, it's also technically against the rules. That's not going to bring down our democracy. But it is tacky to break the rules. Rules are there for a reason.

Again i guess if it its some long standing tradition to not do so, i can see where some may be upset....but to launch a complaint is just plain spiteful IMO. (Unless he was truly breaking a law of course).

In that case, let's wait to see what the officials in charge say about it. The last word is that they are investigating the matter. As I said before, the worst case scenario is a 500 dollar fine, so we're not talking about the fate of our democracy here. Just a tacky, unnecessary situation that an experienced politician should know better than to put himself in.

Which is to say this: regardless of how it turns out, it looks bad to do what he was doing. In politics, perception is reality; Hinman should have a keener sense of optics than that, and should as a matter of course follow all of the rules that he's called upon to follow. It's called behaving ethically even when you don't believe that doing so is in your interest.