'Personal legacies' and our new governor (WA State-Fraudoire)

Gregoire told the crowd in Olympia the other day that "we all have a chance to have a positive influence in the lives of others" because "we all leave personal legacies for the people we know and love."

As president of Kappa Delta sorority more than three decades ago, she tolerated a "whites-only, Christians-only" rule. She presided over rituals with hooded white robes that even reminded some of her own sorority sisters of the Ku Klux Klan and the sorority's racist roots.

She preached about "a legacy of holding government accountable" and the importance of requiring "agencies to be more effective and efficient in achieving results, and ensuring that public tax dollars are being spent wisely."

Her comments triggered the memory of when she was state attorney general. Her office missed a deadline to appeal a $17.8 million jury award to three disabled men abused while under state care.

"If we want unity," Gregoire said, nearing the end of her speech on Wednesday, "we must all be unifiers. If we want accountability, each of us must be accountable for all we do."

"As Gandhi so famously said," Gregoire rhapsodized, "we must all 'be the change we want to see in the world.' "

I wanted to throw up. Gandhi's ghost, I'm sure, wouldn't want to be invoked in the face of such hypocrisy, either.

As the governor embarks on her future of change, she'd do well to take an honest look in the cracked mirror of her past.

What Gregoire (the person) would see would not reflect what Gregoire (the newly anointed politician) says.

I did a search and didn't see this, so hope this isn't a duplicate. I'm quite amazed this article was written by a P-I columnist and actually published in the paper. They're usuall kissing up to all the Dims.

I don't recall hearing the story about her sorority - another case of the Dims "do as I say not as I do mentality".

What she said is typical, again, I'm surprised at what Jamieson says (the following is an excerpt from the article): "Gregoire said the people of our state must change "the way we think about partisan politics, and change ... the way we reach out to each other and reconcile our differences."

I wondered if she was tapping a deep swamp of subconscious guilt about her own less-than-lustrous actions. In the post-election whirl, she blamed Rossi for being whiny in disputing ballot numbers and for fishing for votes.

Didn't Gregoire whistle the same tune when she was behind, before a manual recount put her on top? Didn't she famously say every vote ought to count?"

The situation comes down to this. I believe Gregoire won by about 130 votes. If it is found that more than 130 votes are found to be fraudulent, that is, people voting more than once, dead people voting, people voting who were not registered etc. then there should be a new election. This is the only way to have the voters accept this election as fair.

I believe the statutes require that either:

Dino Rossi prove that irregularities, from any cause, contributed a NET 130 votes to Gregoire. Probably hard to prove this, even though it's most likely true.
Dino Rossi prove that negligence or malfeasance has allowed the unlawful casting or alteration of 130 or more votes that might have been net votes to Gregoire.
Dino Rossi prove that negligence or malfeasance has allowed the unlawful casting or alteration of some votes to Gregoire, the exact number of which is unknowable but is likely to be over 130.

So the mere fact that there are 130 unlawful votes would not suffice to turn the election unless those votes were the result of negligence or malfeasance on the part of election officials.

On the other hand, I think it would be very difficult to argue that neither negligence nor malfeasance contributed to King County's election anomolies. This is not the first election where provisional ballots have been unlawfully commingled with polling-place ballots without being verified. The problem has been acknowledged before, and a simple solution proposed (color-code provisional ballots) but not implemented. The failure to implement the solution would seem to constitute negligence.

Further, the state law requires that counties maintain for two years an accurate list of who actually voted. King County has not only failed to produce a list, but it has openly stated that it does not believe it can ever produce a firm and accurate list. Although one can imagine circumstances that could lead to such a situation without negligence or malfeasance on the part of county officials (e.g. a vehicle carrying a precinct's voter logs gets hit by a gasoline truck before the information gets entered), I see no reason to believe that any such thing happened here.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.