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Why does it cost $10,000 to run for senate in South Carolina?

A man named Alvin Greene won the democrat senate primary in South Carolina on Tuesday, for the right to take on the republican incumbent Jim DeMint in the fall. The man is, according to this Yahoo! news story, a “Mystery SC nominee with a pending felony charge [1].”

Greene, a 32-year-old unemployed military veteran who lives with his parents, defeated Vic Rawl on Tuesday for the Democratic Senate nomination despite having run essentially no public campaign – no events, no signs, no debates, no website, no fundraising.

The result has baffled political observers, who had heavily favored Rawl – a former state legislator, attorney and prosecutor who had the edge inasmuch as he actually campaigned and tried to win.

Another Yahoo! news story (man, they are all over this thing!), explains in greater detail the “felony charge [2]“:

Greene was charged in November of last year, after he was arrested for showing a University of South Carolina student pornography on his laptop in a school library.

Those are the actions of a man with a great deal of initiative, an “outside-the-box” thinker who is exactly the type of person you’d expect to launch a longshot bid for one of the two prestigious seats allotted to South Carolina in the United States senate… and succeed!

And yet, some people think that Mr. Greene might be some kind of cynical plant by nefarious republican operatives. From the second story:

The evidence is mounting that Alvin Greene, the mysterious unemployed veteran and accused sex offender who shocked South Carolina Tuesday night by winning the Democratic Senate primary, was put up to the candidacy in some sort of political skullduggery.

What is that evidence? Well, for one thing, the accused sex offender (did you catch that in the Yahoo! news story? he’s an accused sex offender because he showed someone pornography on a laptop) paid the filing fee with a personal check. And that is suspicious because, well, it costs an awful lot to file to be a candidate for the senate in South Carolina:

Greene has claimed that he paid the $10,400 filing fee out of his savings from his military pay. But he was discharged from the Army in August 2009, and says he hasn’t held a job since then.

It costs $10,400 just to file to be a candidate? For crying out loud who cares how long it’s been since this guy last worked and who cares if he showed someone dirty pictures in a library? Why on earth does it cost $10,400 to file to be a candidate for the senate?

Could it be that democrats and republicans have so thoroughly warped [3] the system that they’ve made it effectively impossible for an unemployed man who happens to be a veteran and, yes, an accused sex offender to even file to be a candidate?

That sounds like real “political skullduggery” to me. And Yahoo! news is completely glossing over what is the real scandal of this story.

Ricky Sprague occasionally writes and/or draws things. He sometimes animates things. He has a Twitter account [7] and he has a blog [8]. He scripted this graphic novel [9] about Kolchak The Night Stalker. He is really, really good at putting links in bios.