Ron Paul would have won the Illinois Straw Poll as well as NH and AL but for two factors:
1) As expected, Mitt Romney opened his wallet and his 8 air conditioned busloads of votes arrived on cue at the polling tent while supporters of other presidential hopefuls had to park nearly a mile away and trudge through the rainy fairgrounds to cast their votes.via Family Tax Payers Network Political Radar which also had this to say about Romney Illinois state chairman Rutherford the Sign Stomper: "The Radar goes on record here to express its disappointment in Sen. Rutherford. We’re very disappointed in your behavior, Dan. Very disappointed."2) But the real story of the day was how McKenna & crew reacted to a large number of new Republicans who turned out in support of Ron Paul’s message of Goldwater republicanism. According to rules established by the ILGOP, voting was to take place between 11am and 4pm. While Rep. Paul finished in 3rd place behind undeclared candidate Fred Thompson, it was discovered that as late as 3:30 pm Ron Paul was in 2nd place with 151 votes to Fred’s 148. Curiously, ILGOP staffers then announced the polls would remain open until 4:30pm 'because it rained earlier,' then they said the polls would close at 4:15pm. But alas, at 4:08pm they got the results they wanted and closed the polls. We’ll let our readers draw their own conclusions.
