Peter Schorsch
It was the lone comment on a story we posted.
And it made my spine shudder.
A local blogger in Palm Beach (his name is Fred Hadley, and he runs a community/political blog in Century Village) found an old story about Irv Slosberg allegedly stealing a voting machine right after the infamous Gore-Bush election/debacle. County staff witnessed it, and a cop was brought in to force the machine from his possession.
Charges were never pressed.
For those of you who do not recall – Palm Beach County was ground zero for that crazy election, and George W. Bush became president in the closest and most controversial election in America since 1800. He won by 537 votes. (Slosberg himself won by a mere 82 votes.)
And Irv Slosberg was in possession of a Vot-a-matic voting machine. What was in the machine? We do not know. Did it have uncounted ballots? We do not know. Was it from one of the Democratic-heavy precincts in Palm Beach County? Yes … we can surmise that. Could it have made a difference for Bush? We will never know.
Truth is, when we speculated on the notion of it changing the course of history, it was kind of tongue-in-cheek.
To be clear, we weren’t joking about Slosberg having the machine in his possession. If you believe local media accounts at the time, Slosberg really did have the machine and a cop really did have to coerce it from him. But that’s all we know and the Moon-landing-was-fake prognostication was, at the time we wrote it, was mostly for fun.
Until the post.
So at the end of the story on Slosberg’s klepto-moment we get this:
“Declining to press charges is something that I regret to this day!”
And that post was signed, “Theresa LaPore.”
Theresa LaPore was mentioned in the story as the person – the Supervisor of Elections at the time – who, due to a major set of distractions, declined to press charges.
If that comment is really really from Ms. LePore (we are reaching out to her to confirm) then this story takes on a whole new life. What was just 24 hours ago an old case, and a moment of levity, suddenly has new life.
First, it confirms that the supervisor herself believes Slosberg took a machine.
Second, IMHO nobody regrets not pressing charges for a petty theft for 16 years. Come on, it was pre-9/11 – a very long time ago. If he swiped a chair 16 years ago, seriously, who would care? If he stole a laptop – oh wait, did they even HAVE laptops 16 years ago? – over a decade ago, that would be long, long forgotten.
But no. Theresa LaPore – if the post really is from her – regrets not pressing charges 16 years later. I am guessing that is because she thinks there really was someone on the grassy knoll, the moon landing was fake, and Sasquatch is indeed real.
Why else would she regret a petty theft 16 years later?
Could Irv Slosberg really have…? Does Theresa LaPore know that …?
I can’t even write it! Stay tuned.
