To say it's "bullying" or a "felony" is nothing but a partisan witch-hunt, unless I'm being told a drastically inaccurate version of events.
Leinad, I think you know me well enough by now to know that I don't use either of those words lightly. To call the concerns raised a "witch hunt" is dismissive and ignores the serious nature of what went on this afternoon. Attempting to pressure a voter into editing their ballot after it has been cast is a crime, plain and simple. It is furthermore abundantly clear, from the testimony presented by Jimmie in this thread and elsewhere, that he did not simply "change his mind" after "hearing the arguments" of the other candidate. He was approached by three prominent Atlasian Federalist minutes after he voted who proceeded to interrogate him about his ballot. It is not hard to see how that would be intimidating, or why Jimmie would have felt pressured to change his vote. You of all people should know what it feels like to be in the crosshairs of that kind of an exchange.
Whether the intentions of dfw and the others were intentionally malicious or not is beside the point. The fact is that they did come of as confrontational and threatening, to the point where a poster felt he needed to change his vote to make it stop. That should never have happened. We can argue about what they 'meant to say' until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, the onus is on the speaker to make sure their words are understood. Jimmie should never have been approached about his vote, and he should never have been put in a position where he was defending his choice against three people at once.
That is the kind of atmosphere that drives people away - and after what happened in Bloody July, it would be morally corrupt of me to stand silently by when one of my constituents feels they are under siege. I've spoken out against this sort of conduct when it occurs within my own party, and I have complete faith that you will do the same.
What dfw, Santander, and Ted did was wrong, period. I'm glad that Ted, at least, seems to have taken responsibility for that (it's not clear to me if dfw's most recent post is an apology for what he said to Jimmie, or merely for his reaction to Griffin's post); but the facts are what they are. This afternoon, a poster was made to feel that they had done something wrong by voting their conscience, and that's a reality that should never be tolerated or excused.
