Posted on 01/17/2005 10:39:05 AM PST by Alex Marko
Two months late, Washington state has a governor. But was the election fair?
ON JANUARY 12th, Christine Gregoire took the oath of office as Washington state's new governor. Nothing unusual in that, you might say. But the Democrat had been declared the winner only a few days beforehand, in what is by some reckonings the closest governor's race in America's history. And that tussle may well not be over yet.
Ms Gregoire was not the initial winner: the first tally after the November 2nd vote put the Republican, Dino Rossi, 261 votes ahead. An automatic recount narrowed his margin to 42 votes. The 2.8m votes were then recounted, this time by hand, and Ms Gregoire won by 129.
Further retallying could be necessary. Election officials in King County, which contains Democratic-leaning Seattle, have admitted to a wide range of errors: counting 348 “provisional” ballots before they could be verified as coming from registered voters; counting hundreds more ballots than the number of voters listed as having cast them; dead people voting with the help of next-of-kin who filled in and signed mail-in ballots. Other counties had similar problems, and some members of the armed forces claim they received their ballots too late to use them.
Earlier this month, the state Republican party sued to have the election overturned. A judge in Chelan County, a conservative place where Mr Rossi won 63% of the vote, was due to start deciding the suit's merits on January 14th. Whatever happens, the loser will promptly appeal to the Washington State Supreme Court, which will probably get the case at the end of the month.
Most Republicans insist there should be an entirely new vote, not just a recount. “There was just a cascade of errors,” says Chris Vance, the chairman of the state Republican Party. “It's impossible to know who really won.” In a state not known for the animosity of its politics, that view is shared by a surprising number of people. Stuart Elway, a local pollster, says that his surveys (taken in late December) show that most voters felt that the election was inconclusive or even fraudulent; only 65% of Democrats acknowledged Ms Gregoire as the clear, fair winner.
Despite this, the local Democratic honchos are fighting hard to ensure that Governor Gregoire becomes a fait accompli. Earlier this week, the Democrat-controlled state legislature rejected Republican efforts to delay the election certification (and thereby the inauguration). Outside, demonstrators, clad in the same orange that reformers in Ukraine wore to protest their stolen election, shouted for a new contest. These protesters will doubtless move on to the state Supreme Court.
In one way, Washington state was merely unlucky. Its problems—inconsistent voting procedures, antiquated voting equipment, sloppy vote-counting—could have happened in any state, argues Paul Gronke, an elections expert in Portland, Oregon. In 2002, spurred on by the Florida recount, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was supposed to improve things. But only a small fraction of the $3.9 billion appropriated for the measure has reached states, and even then it has sometimes caused trouble: California's secretary of state has been accused of mishandling $46m in HAVA funds.
The current embarrassment will spark some form of clean-up in Washington state; there is also talk of change in California, Virginia and Ohio. But in America even national elections remain local affairs, with polling places and procedures determined by individual counties. Imposing rules of any sort is unpopular with county auditors, polling officers and the other people who rule the roost in the current system.
If Washington's Supreme Court insists on a revote, it would take place on April 26th. In the meantime, Governor Gregoire and the legislature will have to attend to other business, including a $1.6 billion budget shortfall. It could be an uncomfortable few months for Washington's new—or at least apparent—governor.
Thanks. Interesting how much more interested the national media were in Ukraine election theft than Washington State election theft. Nice to see the Economist is at least paying attention. Pretty fair summary.
Not exactly.
If the Washington Supreme Court orders a new election, part of the process is declaring that the governorship is vacant. This would mean that Gov. Gregoire would have to leave office, and Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, a "Scoop Jackson" Democrat, would become Acting Governor until the new election produced a new governor.
But it gets even better.
The Washington Constitution states that the governor must be elected with the legislature. Democrats argue that that provision of the state constitution alone would forbid a revote. If the court were to take that argument seriously and strictly construe the state constitution, then all the legislative candidates on the ballot in 2004 -- all of the House and half of the Senate -- would have to go before the voters again along with the governor's race.
This would imply that the current legislature is not legitimately elected, and one result of an ordered revote might be an order for the current legislature to adjourn and go home. Acting Gov. Owen would then have to call the old legislature into session to address these issues, and the Senate in that old legislature was controlled by Republicans.
There is legal maze that has to be traversed before all this can be straightened out. Stay tuned.
Usually there aren't enough bogus votes to tip the outcome of an election and it's just ignored. In this election, bogus votes from a number of separate sources were sufficient to have changed the outcome. It is incomprehensible that anyone of any political bent could defend this election. There were 8,400 more votes cast than there were registered voters, and Gregoire's margin was 129 votes. How the illegal votes went cannot be traced due to how votes are counted to insure secrecy. One cannot credibly argue that either candidate won. If there is no new election, this problem will only grow worse.
No wonder Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago!
I wonder what other companies will leave to save themselves the embarisment of being headquartered in this State?
Excellent informed commentary! BTTT!
You know they say the election was close. That may be a conclusion based on a ruse.
All through the counting process King County was 'finding' votes. In one case there were 10,000 additional ballots added to the total to be counted.
We can be sure that the process is broken but we can't be sure that the count was close.
Talk about "Out of the frying pan, into the fire..."
Gov. Christine Gregoire dances to 'Louie, Louie' during her Inaugural Ball Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2005, in Olympia, Wash.
Democrat Gregoire, 57, a scrappy three-term attorney general who took on the tobacco industry and polluters, took the oath of office before a joint session of the state Legislature. Minority Republicans had battled unsuccessfully to delay her inauguration for two weeks.
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