Posted on 12/16/2004 11:59:33 AM PST by Publius
Republicans announced plans Thursday morning to sue King County over 573 newly discovered ballots that could change the outcome of the closest governor's race in Washington state history.
The county's Canvassing Board voted Wednesday to prepare the 573 absentee ballots for inclusion in the hand recount, over the objections of Republicans who urged the county to investigate the ballots first.
State GOP Chairman Chris Vance said Thursday the party would seek a court order Thursday afternoon in Pierce County, aimed at slowing down the processing of the previously rejected ballots to allow them to be better tracked and verified.
Specifically, the party wants to stop the county from separating the ballots from their outer envelopes, which Vance said would make it far more difficult to determine where the ballots came from, whether they were stored correctly, and why they were not counted previously.
Democrats applauded and Republicans decried the board's decision Wednesday to move forward with assessing the 573 previously rejected ballots. King County is a Democratic stronghold and the newly discovered ballots have the potential to change the outcome of the election.
"I get to vote, I did it right, and it gets to count," said King County Councilman Larry Phillips, whose ballot was among the 573 mistakenly rejected by election workers.
Election workers will verify signatures on the ballots, and the canvassing board will meet again Monday to decide whether to count the ballots that have been verified. The three-member board postponed a decision on what to do with 22 other newly discovered ballots but will consider that Monday as well, said Bobbie Egan, county elections spokeswoman.
Republican Dino Rossi won the Nov. 2 election over Democrat Christine Gregoire by 261 votes in the first count and by 42 after a machine recount. As of Wednesday he had gained 79 votes in the hand recount for a margin of 121.
The canvassing board voted 2-1 to move forward with recanvassing the 573 ballots. King County Election Director Dean Logan and Democratic King County Councilman Dwight Pelz voted for the recanvassing; voting no was Dan Satterberg, chief of staff for Republican King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng.
Satterberg complained that Logan was rushing, and said the board should take more time to figure out the story behind the newly discovered ballots.
"This is a matter of public integrity, public trust," Satterberg told Logan as they met before a row of TV cameras and reporters. "The appearance to the world that's watching is that you're rushing this through."
Logan said King County election workers made a mistake and he wanted to correct it. The absentee ballots were not counted originally because the voters' signatures had not been scanned into the county's computer system. Election workers should have checked the paper files, but instead the ballots were mistakenly rejected. The error was discovered only after Phillips saw his name on a list of rejected absentee ballots and notified Logan.
"The facts are pretty clear there was a discrepancy in the canvassing of these ballots," Logan said. "There is a record that shows these are validly registered voters who did nothing wrong."
State law allows counties to recanvass ballots and correct errors during a recount if there is "an apparent discrepancy or an inconsistency in the returns."
Election workers had found at least 245 of the 573 voters' signatures on paper registration records by Wednesday afternoon. They will continue checking the records and verify the ballots that belong to registered voters. Workers will then take those ballots out of their security envelopes and return them to the board for a final decision on whether they should be counted.
Vance urged the canvassing board to reject the ballots.
"At some point it just lacks credibility that they keep finding ballots," Vance said. "None of these ballots should be counted."
After the canvassing board vote, Phillips retorted, "I don't care what the chairman of the state Republican party has to say. I did my duty as a citizen and he's going to get out the way ... He has a right to have his vote counted and so do I."
State GOP attorneys are considering their options now. If the King County ballots are included in the recount, and they do end up putting Gregoire on top, lawsuits may ensue.
"It doesn't look like I'm going to do any Christmas shopping anytime soon," said Mark Braden, Rossi's chief lawyer, after leaving the canvassing board meeting.
The board delayed a decision on 22 other ballots- 20 absentee and two provisional - found in the side bins of plastic base units in which polling machines sit. All ballots should have been logged on Election Night and returned in a sealed bag to election headquarters, but these 22 apparently weren't. They've been sitting unsecured at various polling places since the election.
The hand recount is expected to finish by Dec. 22, though there's no deadline set in state law. The governor's inauguration is scheduled for Jan. 12.
Meanwhile, two members of the federal Election Assistance Commission arrived in Washington on Wednesday to observe the recount. Kay Stimson, spokeswoman for the commission, said the members wanted to learn about the historically close recount for a report on "best practices" by the states.
I watch CSI so the obvious answer is to take DNA samples from all the envelopes. Keep everything as evidence. The votes could be counted before a judge and the results sealed barring a full investigation. The judge can release if the votes have a material impact on the election but release no margin of victory until the matter is fully investigated.
We've been challenging it all along - even if we DO have Chris Vance as our chairman ;0)
No, you do not. I'm curious to know how you reached that conclusion.
Silent? We've not been silent. The lawsuit success depends on whether we get a fair hearing... In all honesty, I was surprised by how our state Supreme Court ruled recently...
Tough call to make though.
Ya know, we probably could have overlooked the first 3,4, 5, even 6 times they found new ballots. This SEVENTH time, however, strains credibility...
When will you open your eyes to what is happening? On the 23rd recount, when the rats are turning in photocopied ballots???
Vance's first step was a letter to Logan using measured language asking for further consideration of the provenance of these ballots. That was rejected.
The second step is to follow through with a suit.
Ok, since it appears you have no clue what you are talking about, let me ask you something in all seriousness:
At the close of the polls (7 weeks ago), part of the election day process is to take the machines apart one by one, and members of BOTH parties verify that there are no ballots at all stuffed anywhere in or around the machines - including in the side pockets, underneath them inside them. Every nook and cranny is checked and verified.
7 weeks ago, those ballots were not there. Period.
Deal with it.
Uh, sorry, you said you were going to ask me something "in all seriousness". I don't see the question.
The 22 new ballots are more suspicious and are deserving of greater scrutiny than the 500+ absentees. By all accounts those absentees may well be valid and may have been disqualified purely in error. How can you say they shouldn't be counted? Ask yourself honestly, if absentee ballots in a heavily-Republican county were disallowed because of an error by the tabulators, would you be insisting as strongly they shouldn't be counted?
A rather large pair, it seems. Perhaps they have enough left to hand out a few pairs to Congress.
I wasn't speaking about the absentee ballots. I was directly referring to the new 22 ballots, i.e. the 7th ballot find in as many weeks. Those 22 are the ones I am speaking of that were not there during election day. I bet the "paper trail" backs me up on that, too.
Ok, let me get this straight. These ballots were rejected because the signatures were not scanned into a computer. But then we see that one of the signatures not scanned into a King County computer was a democratic councilman in a democratic county by more than likely democratic workers?
How can a democratic councilman's signature not be scanned into a computer by democratic workers in a democratic county? This seems very "odd" to say the least.
Wouldn't they only have to steal 60.6% of the vote?
573 + 121 = 694 -- 694/2 = 347 for 50% of the vote.
347 - 121 = 226 needed for Rossi to get 50% of the vote.
347/573 = 60.55% for a tie or the Rats would need only 60.7% or 348 votes of the 573 to win.
I think that's right... Someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong!
This is where the two nuclear options come in. Neither side wants it to go this far. Already 2 Democratic state senators (Kastama and Sheldon) have said they would vote for Rossi if he won the second recount and their party asked the legislature to intervene. Democrats in the legislature are quietly begging the party not to play this card.
Regardless, the only way possible for those ballots to be missed in the machines is for someone to not have done their job. When the ballots are removed from the machines, it is done by at least two people, often with a third observer. The machine is dismantled and inspected to make sure all ballots are removed from it. The two people who are responsible for this task sign off that they have verified that all ballots are removed from the machine. Each machine has an individual number and those people sign off that they have done the job correctly and completely.
If some ballots are now "found" in a machine, there are at least two people who should lose their jobs and/or face criminal sanctions.
Well, either way it'll be close. So, they'll hold these 22 new ballots, and maybe even find more, just in case they need them. If they don't need them, they'll just toss those ballots and say "We couldn't verify them, so we didn't count them." but if gregoire is behind in teh final count, they'll count them.
Just watch.
And the third step should be thousands of people in the street and camped around the Capitol building while the appeals are pending.
348 votes out of 573 in a DemoRat county would be TOTALLY doable and COMPLETELY unsuspicious also! That's why they know they'll win if they get to count them!
Republicans ought to get with the business of finding ballots, too.
When will the cutoff date be, anyway?
The cutoff, in theory, would be when the 3rd count is certified by the decretary of state...
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