Posted on 12/14/2004 5:38:37 PM PST by JosefK
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Count votes that count
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
The Washington Supreme Court Tuesday reached a unanimous and sound decision in rejecting the Democratic Party's request to effectively alter state election law by judicial fiat.
It is, of course, impossible to know which gubernatorial candidate would have profited had the court ordered all 39 counties to include in the hand recount ballots that had been previously rejected. Democrats presumably believed the change would have benefited their candidate, Christine Gregoire. But it doesn't matter who would have benefited (this newspaper endorsed Democrat Gregoire). The justices' reading of the law seems unquestionable in this case.
A "recount" is just that.
The ruling did not question, however, county elections boards' option of "recanvassing," or re-examining and counting ballots that may have been erroneously rejected before they could be counted.
King County's canvassing board is expected to do just that with 561 ballots presented to it today.
According to King County Elections Director Dean Logan, his office failed to follow through on the verification of absentee ballots with signatures that initially were rejected because the voters' signatures on them didn't match signatures on file in the electronic database. The 561 ballots need to be re-examined to determine if they are legitimate and, if so, counted.
Nonetheless, allegations of fraud and "stolen" elections are unjustified. The outcome will not be settled by taking "to the streets" as one partisan suggested. This is not Ukraine. The high court has done well by adhering to the law of the land. King County is doing well to tally the ballots of those who obviously may have been disenfranchised. The process is working, albeit slowly.
A "recount" should only include previously counted votes, not those manufactured in a back room sometime after the fact!
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