Loren Collins for Congress

The Secretary of State's office has posted the write-in tallies for this year:

http://www.sos.state.ga.us/elections/election_results/2006_1107/write-in_06.pdf

I got 64 votes. Far shy of my initial goal of 1000, putting me in the neighbhorhood of 1%, but that number was wholly dependent on the race attracting *some* degree of press, and that never happened; only the Eighth and the Twelfth District races got any degree of attention.

There are at least two positive spins to this. One is the fact that in a race that already had candidates from both major parties, both of whom were good people, I still managed to attract a fair number more votes than voters I personally know in the district. And I managed it without having much of a budget to work with.

Second, I managed a decent vote-to-expenditure ratio. Hank Johnson spent $670,000, and got 106,000 votes; Catherine Davis spent $160,000, and got 35,000 votes. So they spent $4-6 per vote received, whereas I averaged under $1 per vote.

Also, the last time a person ran as a write-in in the Fourth District was in 1998. There were two qualified write-ins that year, and they, combined, received four votes.

All in all, it's strong motivation for the next race.

As I'm still waiting for a final vote tally, I thought now would be a good time to disclose my campaign finance data. I didn't quite reach the $5000.00 spending limit that requires one to make formal disclosures to the FEC, but I thought it would be proper to share anyway. My itemized expenditures in this race were:

$20.00 - 6-month rental of post office box.
$14.53 - Office Depot purchase of paper and posterboard.
$10.00 - Publication of notice in the Daily Report.
$7.20 - 1-year renewal of voteloren.com URL.
______
$51.73

There was also some photocopying and printing done at the office, and I spent some amount on gas to attend the various candidate events. Three small homemade yard signs were produced. And my webhost costs about $4/month, but it also hosts my other websites as well as my campaign one.

The post office box did me no good whatsoever. It was to provide a mailing address other than my home, but it received nary a letter or donation. So my biggest expenditure was a total bust, which I should have avoided in retrospect. And I still have about 80% of the paper and posterboard I bought, unused and available for other functions in the future.

In perusing the Secretary of State's website, it seems the highest vote total received by a Congressional write-in candidate in recent history was 197. The candidate was Christopher David Borcik, who ran against Mac Collins in the 2000 race for the 3rd Congressioal District. Mr. Borcik, in contrast to myself, spent over $10,000 on the race, including over $9000 of his own money.

I had hoped to beat his total, but I didn't pull it off. On the other hand, I spent only 0.5% of what he did, so at least I got a better return on my investment.

Below is a screencap of the Fourth District's final tally at Facebook.com:



Somewhat disappointingly, these percentages were not updated after late Monday afternoon. Between that time and when the polls closed on Tuesday, I received the 'support' of another six users, which would have put me ahead of Catherine, and probably above 20%.

Not that the number actually means anything substantive, but it sure is satisfying. I doubt any other write-in candidate on Facebook did as well. Even write-in Texas Republican Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, who got 42% of the popular vote, only got 11% on the site.

You may have noticed that last night's election results did not feature my name. While they tallied the votes for names on the ballot rather quickly, write-in candidates don't get the swift treatment.

Certified results are due from the Secretary of State's office on Monday. I spoke with the DeKalb County Board of Registration and Elections earlier today, and was informed that a preliminary tally of my votes will not be available until tomorrow, Thursday, at the earliest.

However, there is one preliminary number already available. The DeKalb Board's website features a vote summary and a precinct breakdown. At present, it is known that 487 voters wrote in names in the Fourth District race. I imagine that some of them were cast by Cynthia McKinney loyalists. How many were for me? And how many write-in votes were cast in Gwinnett and Rockdale? The answers to those questions will have to wait.

So get out there and cast your ballot. If you live or work in the Fourth District, or even just know anybody, please share my name.

In fact, here's a rough draft of a graphic from a campaign ad I never completed. This is what the touch screen graphic will look like (more or less) when you vote for me:



And remember, it's spelled C-O-L-L-I-N-S.

Joe Magyer has posted about his interview with me last week:

The American Politic: Writing In With Loren Collins

My thanks to Joe for the piece.

So you want to cast a write-in ballot for yours truly tomorrow. How will it work? It's simple.

When you come to the Fourth District Congressional race, there will be two names on the screen (Catherine Davis and Hank Johnson), and below them, a box marked "Write In." Select that box.

A keyboard will then appear onscreen, and you'll type my name: LOREN COLLINS. Then touch the box marked "Record Write In."

And that's it. It's even easier than when you literally had to write the name longhand.

I'm mentioned over at Doug Monroe's Political Screed at Atlanta Magazine's website. He starts:

I like this guy. He's not going down politely. Loren Collins is a young lawyer who's running as a write-in candidate in Georgia's 4th Congressional District, Cynthia McKinney's old seat. Check out his blog. He's got the most thoughtful approach to immigration of any candidate I've seen so far. I don't mind voting for a conservative-libertarian, as long as he's not a member of the theocratic/big business cult known as the Republican Party.

A big 'Thank You' to Robbie Honerkamp, who gave me a glowing endorsement over on his LiveJournal.

My favorite line: "In fact, [Loren] may actually be the candidate I most support this year, and certainly the one I'm most excited about voting for."

As a write-in, it's very heartening to read that kind of support.

I'm currently the top item over at Third Party Watch, thanks to Joe Magyer. I met up with Joe on Thursday, and he's putting together a piece on the talk we had. I'll link to it when it's posted.

No question has been asked more times in this campaign than the question of illegal immigration, and as I said below, it dominated today's radio program too. Not surprisingly, my position is not a typical one for either major party, and it's gotten various responses, like at Free Republic.

One of the biggest things I've learned in this campaign is the importance of encapsulating a position for new listeners. This is very tough for me on the illegal immigration issue, because my stance is impossible to sum up in sound bites. Most candidates start with saying we should "Secure the border," but I can't help but consider that unresponsive; is there anyone who honestly believes we should have an unsecure border? The question is how do we best make our border secure.

The biggest downside to my position is that because it's so different, it's often misinterpreted. Part of this is my failure to better explain the nuances of my proposal. On the other hand, I'm rather happy with how I framed the issue over at the aforelinked Free Republic page:

First, like I said on the show, any statutory reform would still require visa applicants to go through a criminal background check and a health screening. Immigration law should *always* be concerned with keeping out criminals and the diseased.

Also, I'm not suggesting that we allow for unlimited visas. Like I said on the air, what we need is a more lenient system. A system that allows more people to immigrate legally, and allows them to do it with less bureaucracy.

The benefits to a more lenient system are numerous. Legal, documented immigrants pay taxes, and thus contribute more back to the system they're benefitting from. The government would know a lot more about the individuals coming in to work or live. We could all but eliminate the human rights abuses of illegals. And like I said on the air, a more lenient policy towards innocent immigrants allows us to focus our attention on the not-so-innocent illegals who would still choose to circumvent the system. The combination of that focus with better documentation would have the effect of making our border *more* secure than it is now.

Are there downsides? Sure, every proposal has its downsides. But attempted enforcement of the current laws does nothing to address the actual, underlying problem. As long as people want to come (and they *will* still want to come), merely throwing up more hurdles won't change that. I believe that what I'm advocating does more to get at that core cause.

It's the third and fourth paragraphs I should have utilized more, detailing the benefits of a more lenient system that aren't often considered, and what I believe are the inherent problems in the "Enforce the laws on the books" approach.

You can listen to today's full broadcast of Control Congress with John Konop, featuring myself and Catherine Davis, at the following link:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/eeevilc/Eeevil_11_04_2006.asf

Incidentally, this is the first time I've been on the radio since 2000. I just wish we'd gotten to talk about more subjects.

I have a letter in this week's Creative Loafing, chastising the paper for failing to even mention third party candidates in last week's Endorsement Issue.

And I might have plugged myself in the process. Sadly, they left out my website mention.

Down in the comments I share this 2005 CL column, which includes a sincere apology for omitting the LP candidates in the paper's 2004 endorsement issue. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to result in any different approach this year.

Without a new video for today, I thought I'd expand on yesterday's on Social Security. Like I say in the video, I stand to lose over $4000 this year to Social Security OASI (Old Age and Survivors Insurance) taxes, including the employer's "contribution."

By comparison, my rent for the year will come to about $7000. Food, probably under $4000. Health insurance, approximately $1600. Car insurance, about $1200.

Yet over $4000 for old age and survivors insurance (this doesn't even include SS Disability). Insurance that, at best, promises a subpar benefit and, at worst, might not pay anything at all. Insurance so lousy that it wouldn't succeed if offered in the market (if it were actually legal to offer a private plan that mirrored Social Security's methods). And I have over three decades ahead of me where I can look forward to paying at least that much per year.

I'm not especially partial to one solution over another, so long as it offers people, and particularly young people, more control over the money they earn. I'm not happy with my health insurance being as high as it is; how could I possibly be content with Social Security costing me well over twice as much, and offering less in return?

A Green Party friend of mine recently asked why Social Security should be optional if paying for the fire and police departments aren't. Simply put, because they're not as expensive. If Social Security only cost the average American a couple of hundred bucks a year, it wouldn't be nearly as high on my political hit list.

But it doesn't cost hundreds; it costs thousands. All for a program that, when it began, had a MAXIMUM tax burden (in 2006 dollars) of about $800 a year. It's a financial burden on every person paying it, and its history of hikes merely evidences its unsustainability. Yet even when people on the Left acknowledge the problem of Social Security, the proffered solution is often to raise taxes still higher.

Is there risk in letting people take chances with their own money? Of course. Life has risk, and it's not the government's role to insulate us from all of it. And to me, this risk isn't worth losing $4000 a year.

How much is it worth to you?