Posted on 01/01/2005 5:24:59 AM PST by Klickitat
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The Seattle P-I is misfiring on all cylinders today. They begin a calumny masquerading as an editorial by exposing fatal ignorance:
Absolutely preposterous. Dino Rossi's call for a rerun of the governor's election has no basis, at least so far.And it just gets worse after that. They exhibit a fawning attitude towards the AG which highlights their ongoing dereliction of journalistic duty in researching the plethora of King County ballot irregularities.
Gregoire's conduct throughout the difficult post-election period has been exemplary. She showed optimism, patience and a disciplined pursuit of legally valid processes on the basis of facts and principles, not vague feelings.OUCH. My brain hurts.
In contrast to Gregoire's dignified patience, Rossi now wants another shot at winning the election without meeting the high legal standards that should be required.Here's an example of her "dignified patience": " 'I've said all along, 42 votes out of 2.9 million is literally a tie,' Gregoire told The Associated Press...." (But 129 is not.)
Further: "As justification for recount, Gregoire and the Democrats have cited voting 'irregularities' in several counties and that Rossi's margin of victory is well within the margin of error for mechanical counters." She sent out a blatantly fraudulent letter which claimed "the error for voting machines is somewhere between 1 and 2 percent," which would mean 1 to 2 in a hundred.
Well, that's a joke on several counts, as SoundPolitics readers well know.
The Federal Election Commission standard for error rates on voting machines is one mistake in 1,000,000 ballots read by the machine: this is the standard used in Washington State for certification of voting systems. The human error rate is much higher.
And if 'irregularities' were present before, this recount, with its pseudo-votes and violations of state law, is even worse.
Back to the Post-unIntelligencer screed:
We are not surprised by much in politics, but Rossi's request that now Gov.-elect Gregoire join him in asking for a new vote was amazing. He said the election was "a total mess," an absurdly subjective way to describe the generally well-conducted election.Note: this was not a satire written by the Onion or Scrappleface. They published this with a straight face.
In the same paper, columnist Robert Jamieson gets it horribly wrong when he writes:
While one wrinkle did emerge yesterday, it so far offers no compelling reason for state voters to rush back to the ballot box. According to a list of voters in the Nov. 2 election, more votes [5,000+] appeared to have been counted in King County than there were actual listed voters. King County election officials said the list was a preliminary one that did not take into account some voters, such as domestic-abuse victims, whose voting information is kept confidential for safety.Which should account for maybe 250 of these at most.
Curiously, Rossi wasn't armed with this information when he thundered wildly about the need for a revote.
And Secretary of State Sam Reed, a fellow Republican, says he has no reason to believe that votes were improperly cast. Not yet. This propagandistic spin is an exact inversion of reality (also, Rossi has not "thundered wildly").
As David Postman of the Seattle Times wrote, "the issue of the mismatched numbers in King County came as a surprise to [Reed]. And while he said some discrepancy is not unusual as counties reconcile records after an election, the number in King County is large enough that he sent a staff member to investigate."
Thus, it was not Rossi who was uninformed as Jamieson implies, it was Reed.
So, lacking a clear-cut case of fraud or evidence of some Herculean screw-up, a revote for revoting's sake just makes a big old mess."Herculean" usually refers to an immense effort needed to accomplish a difficult goal: for example, a private, all-volunteer weblog attempting to contend with (and edify) an obdurate press.
He goes on:
People might actually switch their minds from how they originally voted. Some folks who sat on the sidelines during the first election could now decide to rush onto the voting field, skewing the result wildly.Yikes, they might exercise their right to vote for who they want?!
I thought we wanted to "count every vote"?
Unless someone can come up with solid proof, the revote is a Pandora's box that ought to be tossed into Puget Sound. Kerplunk!Stefan, feel free to bang your head here.
With his knee-jerk call for a revote, Rossi stands to become a political creature I hadn't envisioned -- a beast of his own making, abetted by the howling mob of state Republican Party chiefs and talk-radio listeners who want to win at all costs, taking a page from the Karl Rove playbook.At least they're not bawling, like Berendt.
But to try to stuff a revote down the throats of Washingtonians who have had enough of this laughingstock election would be like Dino doing the monster mash all over voters' weary toes."Mr. Jamieson, your editor is on line one, something about wanting you to be sure to call it a 'generally well-conducted laughingstock election.' Oh, and stop mixing metaphors."
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Side note, from The Olympian: "Rossi, a real-estate agent from Sammamish, held a news conference in Bellevue, where he told reporters that he still has questions about how some votes were counted -- and others were not allowed -- in the closest governor's race in U.S. history."
Characterizing him as a real-estate agent is purposeful: it's meant to make readers forget that he is an elected state senator. I suppose they could call Gregoire a "whites-only sorority president from Seattle" to balance this.
(Hat tip to Orbusmax again.)
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Categories: 2004 Governor's Race , Local Media
Total Meltdown in King County Voter List
It was last reported that there were 3,539 more ballots counted in King County than voters who cast them. The discrepancy is actually much larger.
The 3,539 is only the net. This comes from having roughly 1,500 more voters than counted ballots in some precincts, and about 5,000 more ballots than known voters in other precincts.
[This picks up where I left off in the post below about Precinct 3301. I can find only 41 precinct changes among counted voters in the Dec. 29 file since the Nov. 1 file and these appear to be provisional voters who corrected their precincts at the polls. Conclusion: in certain precincts there are about 1,500 more known voters who cast ballots that were accepted than there are ballots that were counted in the manual recount].
Bob Williams of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation brought to my attention several sections of the WAC that govern the canvassing boards. As I read the WACs, the King County canvassing board should not have certified its election without getting the count of voters to reconcile with the count of ballots, and that is something that they obviously have not done.
Among these: WAC 434-262-040
Verification of auditor's abstract of votes. The county canvassing board shall examine the auditor's abstract of votes and shall verify that all of the individual precinct and absentee ballot totals have been included in the abstract and that the subtotals and county-wide totals for registered voters and votes cast are an accurate reflection of the sum of those individual precinct and absentee ballot totals.[See the other sections in chapter 434-262 for related rules].
I suspect that the canvassing board simply checked the total number of registered voters on the rolls and not the number of voters who cast ballots. But that would be terribly lame if that's all they think they're required to do.
In any case, I would be very surprised if King County will be able to account for both 1,500 ballotless voters and 5,000 voterless ballots. The few explanations that have been offered, confidential voters and military voters, only account for about 100 and at most 200 voterless ballots respectively.
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Categories: 2004 Governor's Race
A new website dedicated to pushing for a revote: ReVoteWA.com.
There's a petition to the legislature demanding a revote that can be signed on-line or in person.
The website's background color is appropriately orange!
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Categories: 2004 Governor's Race
More suspicious numbers in the King County handcount
Been spending more time analyzing the newly posted precinct canvass of the King County manual recount, and the differences with the canvass of the machine recount.
The story seems to be that at every opportunity where new ballots were somehow introduced into the mix, Gregoire benefited disproportionately.
As mentioned in an earlier post, 266 ballots seemed to disappear, while 325 magically materialized. Again, these are not just a matter of reinterpration of marks on paper, these are entire sheets of paper that either vanished or appeared out of thin air. Christine Gregoire added a net 47 new votes to her total, Dino Rossi lost a net 12 from his.
Dig deeper.
There were 238 precincts that found new ballots, 291 precincts that lost ballots, and 2087 precincts where the ballot count didn't change from the machine count.
In the precincts where the ballot count didn't change, new votes were added to/subtracted from the candidates counts by reinterpreting the undervotes and overvotes. In these precincts, Rossi gained +23 and lost -27; Gregoire gained +47 and lost -36. (1 was a Rossi that flipped to Gregoire) Out of the under/over-votes reawarded to a candidate, Gregoire won 68%, significantly more than her 59% share of the vote in King County overall. Of the candidate votes that were reinterpreted to be under/overvotes, Gregoire lost only 58%, slightly less than her share of the vote.
In the precincts that discovered new ballots, but didn't change the number of under/overvotes, Gregoire won 131 (69%) of the 200 newly added ballots. In the precincts where ballots vanished, but the number of under/overvotes did not change, Gregoire lost 108 (58%) of the disappeared ballots.
When ballots disappeared, they disappeared proportionally from both candidates. When ballots appeared, they appeared disproportionally for Gregoire.
Oddly enough!
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Categories: 2004 Governor's Race
The Seattle Times' David Postman credits me with finding what could be the "smoking gun" to overturn the election:
The latest questions about King County came after the elections office released on Wednesday a list of all registered voters in the county, broken down by those who voted and those who didn't. The Republican Party, among other groups, had requested the information as part of its investigation of voting irregularities.
Conservative blogger Stefan Sharkansky pointed out the discrepancy Wednesday, and by yesterday it was Topic A among Rossi backers and Republican Party officials.
Party Chairman Chris Vance said it could be the "smoking gun" needed to overturn the election.
The number of King County ballots counted in the final tally was 899,199 — 3,539 more than the number of participating voters reported in the county's list. (I reported that here).
I'll personally hold off on calling anything I've found a smoking gun. But the unanswered questions keep piling up. Scroll down to Precinct 3301.
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Categories: 2004 Governor's Race
Precinct FED 30-3301, or simply Precinct 3301, is located in Federal Way in south King County off I-5. I've never been there and I don't know much about it except that it helps illustrate why this election, in Dino Rossi's words, is a "total mess" and needs to be nullified.
Now that King County has released the precinct canvass for the manual recount, we can see how Precinct 3301 voted in each of the three counts
| Count | Gregoire | Rossi | Bennett | Write-in | Undervote | Overvote | Total |
| Initial | 191 | 142 | 14 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 355 |
| Machine | 191 | 143 | 14 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 356 |
| Manual | 191 | 141 | 13 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 352 |
In fact, it wasn't as simple as merely adding 59 ballots, they actually added a net total of 325 ballots to some precincts and removed a net total of 266 ballots from other precincts.
Precinct 3301 is one of the precincts that lost ballots. How can this happen? It's not that marks were interpreted differently. It's that pieces of paper disappeared in one count, or only existed in somebody's imagination in an earlier count. We're assured that in every case the diligent election workers tallied and retallied and checked each others numbers and that their ballot counts were perfect! Every time they changed they were perfect! The process is perfect, except for those four annoying pieces of paper that somehow disappeared from Precinct 3301 during the manual recount, and the other 262 pieces of paper that somehow disappeared from all those other precincts, and the 325 other pieces of paper that magically materialized somewhere else.
We know a little bit about what happened in the machine recount. A new ABSENTEE ballot for Dino Rossi somehow materialized in this precinct. But we don't yet know what kinds of ballots were lost in the "more accurate" manual recount, because the precinct canvass for the manual recount doesn't include that information.
But fortunately, this time we now also know how many voters voted in Precinct 3301. The King County voter file tells us that 354 citizens voted in Precinct 3301 -- 252 Absentee, 85 Polling Place and 17 Provisional. 354 voters cast valid ballots, of which only 352 can be located.
Precinct 3301 isn't the only precinct that has more voters than ballots, it only came up on the top of my list because it lost the most ballots in the manual recount. In fact, 684 out of 2,616 precincts have more voters than ballots, for a total of 1,512 ballotless voters. Were these ballots simply lost? Did the elections office (contrary to instructions) release a file that reflects changes in voters' addresses and precincts that have occurred in the weeks since the election? Or what? We may never know.
And that's just one more example of why this election is a "total mess" and why we need to set it aside and move on to a revote.
UPDATE: I thought to cross-reference the Dec. 29 voter file against the Nov. 1 voter file to see if any voters have changed precincts. Some have. One more strike against KC Elections. I specifically asked for the voter list to describe the voters as of the day of the election. Inter-precinct migration explains only 1 of the Precinct 3301's 2 ballotless voters. There are still at least 353 voters who cast ballots in Precinct 3301 on the day of the election, but only 352 of these ballots were counted. I'll work on a comprehensive analysis of all precincts.
UPDATE 2: It now appears that the voters who changed precincts were provisioinal voters who corrected their precincts at the polls on election day and there were only about 40 of them. The basic conclusion stands: in certain precincts there are roughly 1,500 more voters than counted ballots, and therefore in other precincts there must also be about 5,000 more ballots =than there are known voters.
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Categories: 2004 Governor's Race
The Seattle Times' Misleading Database
The Seattle Times website has now posted a nifty tool where you can look up King County voters in their database and it's supposed to tell you if and how they voted. [It appears to be based on the same county datafile that I obtained yesterday]
Problem: The Times database is incomplete and somewhat misleading.
Most of its data seems to be correct. For example, you can look up "Sharkansky" and it will correctly tell you that I live in Seattle 98103 and that I voted at my polling place. They even spell "Stefan" correctly.
BUT, "most" is only good enough for horseshoes, hand grenades and the King County elections office. It's not good enough for a newspaper which is attempting to tell you what the King County elections office did to your ballot.
It completely ignores the nearly 170,000 "Inactive" status voters, most of whom have genuinely dropped out of the voter universe for one reason or another. But inactive voters are not the same as cancelled voters and they're still eligible to vote. Indeed, 3,220 of KC's Inactive voters cast valid ballots this election. Unfortunately, if you look up any Inactive voter in the Seattle Times database, it will tell you that the voter is "not found", even if their ballot was counted.
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Oops, moments after I posted my initial version of this post I had a brainwave to delve deeper on a point of fact and I now retract some statements that were posted here for a couple of minutes. My error. If you're reading this post for the first time, "never mind"
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Categories: 2004 Governor's Race
"No, Attorney General, this isn’t ‘golf’ "
Press release from the Governor's office:
With so many disenfranchised military voters, how can this be a fair election?
Bellevue, WA – Today Dino Rossi stood with the family of a disenfranchised Marine from Snohomish County to again call for a revote in the governor’s race.
Tyler Farmer is a Marine serving in Iraq, who was recently wounded in Fallujah. He is registered to vote in Snohomish County, and went to extraordinary lengths to make sure he’d be able to vote, but he didn’t receive his ballot until after Election Day. His parents, Charles and Marty Farmer, and his brother, Dylan Farmer, today questioned the fairness of the election process.
“I’d like to ask Christine Gregoire how she can take office in good conscience when so many of our Armed Forces, including my son, weren’t allowed to vote,” said Charles. “The rules were changed for some people in King County, but not for everyone else. That’s wrong.”
Rossi said the election is such a mess that at this point the best solution is a revote. He said his office is receiving a steady stream of calls and e-mails from members of the military, or their loved ones, who never got their ballots or received them too late.
Rossi’s spokeswoman Mary Lane said Gregoire’s remark about the election not being “golf” and that there are “no do-overs” isn’t a sufficient answer to people like Tyler Farmer.
“Christine Gregoire is trying to sweep this election mess under the carpet because she doesn’t want to face up to all the wrongfully disenfranchised people across Washington,” said Lane. “But people like Tyler Farmer, and all the other servicemen and women who were denied their right to vote, aren’t going away. And the fact that this entire election process has been a complete mess isn’t going away, either.
“We need a revote because the people of Washington deserve to have a governor who actually wins an election fair and square.”As for the cost of a revote: a Gregoire term would be a lot more expensive. 
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Categories: 2004 Governor's Race
ping list ping
Republicans have a window of opportunity. Two years (and most likely four years) with control of the house and senate and presidency.
There is no more important issue at this time in the history of the US than vote fraud. It must be stopped. Institutions must be put in place to stop it forever.
Something along the lines of secure identification of voters and real enforcement of one-citizen-one-and-only-one vote.
If this is not done, the RATS take over... forever.
Once they start winning big with vote fraud, there's no stopping them.
Ever.
They already won. And the Stupid Party is too apathetic to surround State Government buildings in Olympia with hundreds of thousands paralyzing it until they get a revote.
Click the picture & goto "last" for the latest on Vote Fraud:
The Criminal Party vs. The Stupid Party.
Lost in the shuffle: We The People of The United States.
Exactly. I've been saying that since 2000 -- but the GOP has its best opportunity right now. Electoral Reform has got to be made a priority.
I know, I know, there's always somebody going to say "you can get a phoney I.D. you know!"
OK then! Require that a digital picture be made of that I.D., and the person demanding to vote when they show up to vote, and they don't show up on the voter lists. Maybe even require a thumb print to get a "provisional" ballot.
If it turns out they are fraudulent, PROSECUTE THEM! You'll have their picture, a picture of their phoney I.D. as proof of fraud, and a thumb print to prove actual I.D..
Discrimination? Hell yeah! It's good to discriminate between an eligible, and a fraudulent voter! It would only be RACIAL discrimination if it required these measures of ONE RACE OF PEOPLE over another.
Any idiot poll worker can snap a digital camera pic. They make simple stickers that hold a thumb print, (I was required to do that in the 70's in K.C. MO. to cash my paychecks at my own bank! They stuck the print to the back of the check.)
DEMAND that your Senators, and Representatives introduce and pass something to address voter fraud before the next national election. And if you get the run around, let em know that they don't have job security. Tell them that you will work tirelessly to REPLACE them with someone who will REPRESENT the wishes of the governed!
It will only get worse, if they continue to get away with it SCOTT FREE!
ping
You are right...........sadly, Washingtonians learned nothing from the Ukraine election, ie: fighting blatant vote fraud 101.
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