Posted on 12/02/2004 1:28:04 PM PST by WashStateGirl
Methinks that Kerry is seriously thinking about running again in '08. He didn't fund this effort out of the goodness of his heart. There's a motive, and its retaining his campaign base. Tell the SwiftBoat guys that they're still "on duty".
It seems to be irrelevant, though. WA will force a full recount if the winner flips. If the winner doesn't flip, no reason to sue.
They may not have wanted to establish a precedence, but I think they got one as far as partial recounts go. My take was the court was worried about lower courts expanding on the ruling until it was nearly impossible to run an election (as in why do I have to use a punch card, and that other guy gets to use a less error prone touch screen?).
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/200635_gov22.html
Judge refuses to block King County recount
Ballots that can't be scanned will be included
Monday, November 22, 2004
By SAM SKOLNIK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Denying a last-minute bid for a freeze by the state Republican Party, a federal judge ruled yesterday that King County can continue hand-counting certain ballots in the recount of the governor's race.
The GOP had sought a temporary restraining order to stop the hand-counting, claiming the procedure violates state election law.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman sets the stage for a potentially protracted legal battle over the so-called "undervoted" ballots, on which voters' choices for governor could not be read by the county's optical-scan machines.
The decision was a victory by Democrats, whose gubernatorial candidate, Christine Gregoire, is trailing Republican Dino Rossi by the slimmest of margins.
Democrats blasted the weekend lawsuit as an attempt to quash the intent of hundreds of voters in King County -- where Gregoire's support is strongest.
"It's very difficult for me to think that any judge was going to interfere with an election process ... where standard procedures are being used," said state Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt. "The Republicans are operating under the principle that certain people's votes should not count. We think everyone's vote should count."
State GOP Chairman Chris Vance played down the significance of Pechman's ruling, pointing out that it dealt with only one facet of the lawsuit.
Vance noted that the judge said her decision was based on King County's assurance that all ballots in question are being kept separate from the others so they can be reviewed to see if any mistakes have been made -- instead of being thrown back into the general ballot pool.
"We don't believe King County," Vance said. "Our observers have watched. Ballots are being altered. And we don't believe they are being set aside."
Pechman denied the request for a temporary restraining order during a 15-minute conference call with attorneys yesterday afternoon.
The suit was filed Saturday against Secretary of State Sam Reed and the King County Division of Elections. Today, a federal judge will be randomly assigned to hear the case.
Out of more than 2.8 million ballots cast, Rossi leads Gregoire by 261 votes. After the statewide counting ended Wednesday, an automatic recount was triggered. King, Pierce, Skagit and Spokane Counties started their recounts Saturday.
The recount in expected to wrap up by Wednesday. So far, Klickitat County in southwest Washington has been the only one to post results. In those results, released Saturday, Rossi won the recount 4,767 to 3,919 -- picking up one new vote.
"Undervoted" ballots are those in which the optical-scan machine didn't register a choice for governor because the voter only partially filled in the oval next to the name of candidate, just put a checkmark there or circled the candidate's name instead of filling in the oval.
In those instances, election officials say, workers have been inspecting the ballots to determine the voter's intent, and then duplicating damaged ballots or "enhancing" others so that the machine can read the vote.
The GOP suit claims that King County election workers are applying a "subjective standard" when evaluating ballot marks.
Though hand-recounting has been mandated in counties where optical machines are used, the suit claims that's unfair because the same process is not used in counties that use punch-card ballots.
The suit also claims that once those ballots are enhanced and recounted, they're being mixed back into the general ballot pool. "In other words," the suit alleges, "once enhanced, the egg cannot be unscrambled; and as each hour passes, more and more eggs are being broken."
As of late yesterday, out of about 300,000 polling place ballots recounted, 695 such "undervoted" ballots had been duplicated or enhanced and then recounted, King County Elections Director Dean Logan said. A small number of those ballots were votes counted for the first time, he said.
Election officials dispute the GOP's interpretation of the law, saying they've been conducting the process precisely as it's been laid out to them.
One of those who attended the telephone hearing, Tom Ahearne, representing the Secretary of State's Office, noted that Pechman told the attorneys that "no irreparable harm" could come by continuing to count the ballots as the suit was heard.
"We remain very confident that we've been following state election law," Logan said.
If you live on the West side and want to join our Puget Sound Chapter, please FReepmail me your regular email address so I can add you! :)
Observers from all interested parties are allowed to watch state employees doing the manual recount.
The manual recount will NOT stop on counties the democRATS want recounted if the current winner comes up losing. IOW if the election flips to democRAT Gregoire because of the partial recount, then the state of Washington is required to recount the entire state. OTOH if the partial recount requested by Gregoire still has Dino Rossi winning, then tax payers will be spared the extra expense of remaining recount.
That is old news. Rossi prevailed inspite of the King county officials "interpreting" voter intent, by 42 votes.
Are you sure? I specifically remember a story a few years back of Pierce County election workers transcribing ballots that had bad erasures or extraneous marks.
This is not:
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
By JOHN CARLSON
GUEST COLUMNIST
What's the difference between Christine Gregoire and me?
I lost one count for governor. Gregoire has now lost two.
Yes, it was close -- a photo finish. But it was not, as she is telling people, a tie. Dino Rossi won it fairly, he won it squarely and he won it twice. Yet Gregoire is calling for a third count done by hand because she wants "accuracy."
Actually, she wants 43 votes. And a hand count is easier to get there, because hand counts are less accurate than machines. Those who understand the process of running an election, including our two previous secretaries of state, agree with Democrat Dean Logan, the head of King County's elections office, who said, "When you're talking about close to 900,000 pieces of paper, I think the machine count is going to be more accurate than a manual count." By the way, though no one's saying it out loud, it's also easier to cheat with hand counts.
Are machines perfect? No, which is why a recount was necessary in the first place. Yet after nearly 2.9 million votes were recounted, the results were almost the same. The main reason Rossi's margin slipped from 261 to 42 is that King County "enhanced" votes rejected by the machines. In 38 of the state's 39 counties, only 208 net votes were added to either Rossi or Gregoire in the recount. Then came King County, which represents a third of the electorate. Gregoire netted a gain of 245 votes -- more than the rest of the state for both candidates combined.
Gregoire is no longer acting like someone who wants "every vote counted"; she's acting like someone who wants the votes counted again and again, in different ways if necessary, to produce the results she's almost but not quite getting.
More than a political race is at stake here. Washington long has been known as a clean place in which to do politics, but that reputation evaporates if Rossi becomes the only candidate in state history (and one of the only ones in U.S. history) to win an election on the first count, win it again on the second and then be denied the oath of office by a third count that used a less reliable method for counting the ballots.
The anger would extend far beyond the Republican Party. A KING-5 poll shows that 66 percent of the people believe Rossi is the winner. Only 24 percent -- less than the Democrat base vote in Washington -- believe Gregoire won the race. Even some newspapers that endorsed her are now calling on her to put the state's interests ahead of her own and concede the race.
That's not too surprising. Former Secretary of State Ralph Munro said last week that he would have urged Rossi to concede and unify the state if he, rather than Gregoire, lost both counts. I would have done the same. It's not like he or she isn't there to fight another day. John Thune lost a U.S. Senate race by 513 (suspicious) votes in South Dakota in 2002, only to come back this year and defeat Tom Daschle. Maria Cantwell was bounced out of Congress in 1994 after one term. She came back in 2000 and now sits in the Senate.
But never mind the candidates for a moment. A third count won't erase doubts about the results, it will raise them, and that hurts Washington state. It means lawyers and judges ultimately decide the winner, not the voters. Gregoire should do what a real leader would do: Instruct her party that the race is over, concede the race to Rossi so he can form a government and then regroup and re-emerge later. There's life after losing a governor's race, I promise.
John Carlson hosts an afternoon talk show on KVI radio in Seattle; jcarlson@fisherradio.com. He was the Republican nominee for governor in 2000.
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