AMES, IA —GlossyNews The Iowa GOPTea party Straw Poll August 13th will be the more unusual considering the political times it will record. GOPTea Chairman Matt Strawn, one-N-short-of-namesaking the Iowa Straw Poll, announced today that the listing of candidates will be quite unique in 2011, as it will be a ballot with 10 blank name-spaces.
There will be 6 blanks for the candidates who have paid their $15,000 tenting fees: Bachmann, Cain, McCotter, Pawlenty, Paul, & Santorum.
Then 3 additional blanks for Romney & Huntsman – both of whom could easily afford the fees, but said no anyway – and “Final Run” Gingrich, who wanted to buy his tent space, but his wife had already maxed out the Tiffany Charge Card for the 3rd quarter of 2011 for her birthday presents which were supposed to be picked out and delivered in March, but since she was on a cruise, they had to wait.
That explains 9 of the poll’s blank spaces. And, for the first time ever in the history of the Iowa Straw Poll, a new 10th blank space has been added for a write-in candidate. Never before has the Iowa Straw Poll had or even sensed that it needed a write-in space.
Chairman Strawn said “placement on the ballot could affect the GOPTea nomination battle itself. We decided to avoid any hint of who is first on the ballot by allowing everyone to put the 9 candidates in their own preferred order. We wanted to to protect the collective Iowa Ass, as it were.”
Strawn continued, “Each previous straw poll, we have been criticized for our listing order of the candidates. Romney was lucky last time to be first and he won. Huckabee complained bitterly but he ended up with the caucus win later on.”
Chairman Strawn held up his hand to stop questions, “before questions, I have one final point to make about this momentous and historic change. This straw poll will abide by the strict rules of the International Straw Poll Association – the ISPA. After the ballots are printed tomorrow, there will be no name-spaces added. None.”
Independent newswoman Helen Thomas called out a question, “Why didn’t you include Perry and Palin, who have campaigners working here in the state?”
Strawn smiled at Ms. Thomas and said “Helen, our listing software is very primitive here in the sticks. There just weren’t any more blank ‘P’ name-spaces available. It would have been prohibitively costly to upgrade the software at this point to raise the ‘P’ level to 4, on the assumption that these two may run.”
“Sam Donaldson ABC News here, Mr. Strawn. Who is this McCotter everyone seems to be touting? And a followup – Why not include Johnson, Karger and Roemer? They’re all as unknown as McCotter – well, Roemer says he was a governor once – but at least they’ve declared.”
“Hey Sam,” began Mr Strawn, “you are pushing some pretty good thought there about the people we have allowed and disallowed. But the truth is that we are trying to make the Poll the best it can be. The second truth is that sometimes an unknown wins.
“The real truth is as far from that as you can get. The smaller size of the paper we are using for ballots is what cuts the length of the list quicker than a simple ‘no vote’. We’ve got millions of those ballots and we aren’t going to change the size of the paper just because you know of some people who might want to enter my straw poll.”