Dirty Tricks Strike DC Special Election

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Dirty Tricks Strike DC Special Election

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Never mind the question of why somebody would want to be elected to school board when the school board's functions have been taken over by the Mayor, as happened in the District of Columbia.  And never mind that eight people want this job.  What's hard to figure out is why one of them would bother to cheat to be elected to an almost powerless position.

But that's what Mai Abdul Rahman did, when she created a fictitious supporter, Kindell Howard, to post messages on her behalf on various email lists in Washington, DC.  As the moderator of the Cleveland Park Listserv in Washington, DC. I received one of those Kindell Howard messages which said, "I was away for a while, but as soon as I got back this morning I spotted a bus tail gate ad for Mai Abdul Rahman. Pretty cool. Have they been running for a while?"

This message struck me as fishy, and I told our other list moderators not to approve any messages from Kindell Howard until we could verify that he was a real person.  A little more investigation revealed that Kindell Howard and Mai Abdul Rahman were posting other identical messages on various listservs.  And nobody could find any evidence of a real Kindell Howard.  

Meanwhile, another list moderator, Jeff Steele, who runs the Crestwood Neighborhood email list, was also on the case of sniffing out Kindell Howard.  Steele verified that Howard and Rahman's messages originated from the same IP address, which means that they were sent from the same computer.  You can read Jeff Steele's article about uncovering this bit of trickery here.  Rahman has denied being Kindell Howard.

On the City Council front, things were really heating up, especially since there were 19 people running for the one Ward 4 City Council seat vacated by Mayor Adrian Fenty.  With so many candidates running for this seat, it takes some creativity to get ahead of the pack.  Somebody tried to get out in front by creating fake campaign literature aimed at hurting candidate Muriel Bowser.  These campaign flyers, which were widely distributed in Ward 4, told people to be sure to vote for Muriel Bowswer, who's listed as #15 on the ballot.  The problem is that Muriel Bowser is listed as #6 on the actual ballot. Another candidate, Renee Bowser (no relation to Muriel) is #15 on the ballot.

Muriel Bowser was endorsed by the Washington Post and Mayor Adrian Fenty, making her the presumed front runner.  

With me so far? There are two Bowsers in the race -- one named Muriel (#6 on the ballot) and one named Renee (#15 on the ballot.)  These fake campaign flyers told people to vote for Muriel Bowser by marking the ballot so that they would actually cast their vote for Renee Bowser. These flyers were on green paper, the same color used by Muriel Bowser.  Nobody knows for sure right now who created the fake flyer.

(There are also two people with the last name Brown running for Ward 4 City Council, making this perhaps the most confusing race for DC City Council of all time.)

Just in: Muriel Bowser won the Ward 4 City Council seat; Mai Abdul Rahman lost her bid for School Board.  For full election results visit http://dcboee.org.