King County vote count off by more than 3,700 votes

Sound Politics ^ | 1-24-05 | Stefan Sharkansky

[Seattle Conservative]

I've finished the massive project of trying to reconcile the King County voter list to the vote count as accurately as humanly possible. My conclusion: their numbers are off by at least 3,748 votes, or roughly 30 times former Attorney General Gregoire's alleged "victory" margin.

The previously reported discrepancy of 2,150 (348 unverified provisionals + 1,800 unexplained more ballots than voters) represents only the net difference between ballots and voters. While many precincts counted more ballots than voters, a lot of precincts counted more voters than ballots. When you add up all the voterless ballots and all the ballotless voters, the true number of improperly counted votes reaches at least 3,700 and is presumably somewhat higher.

These are the issues I had to deal with given the state of the data that King County delivered.

1) The latest voter file (Jan. 7) had been updated to reflect changes to the registration rolls since the election. In order to get precinct information that was correct as of election day, I used precinct information from the Nov. 1 file. The 557 magical mystery voters who were in the Jan. 7, but not the Nov. 1 were counted in the precincts recorded in the Jan. 7 file.

2) I recovered the records of 253 voters who were listed in the Dec. 29 file, but had been dropped by Jan. 7.

3) I removed the 636 duplicate records that the County included in the Jan. 7 file.

4) For whatever reason, the 566 magical "Larry Phillips" ballots that were counted by the canvassing board on the last day of the manual recount were not added to the precinct totals in the Manual Recount Canvass file. They were listed as a separate line item called "Canvass Additions". In order to include these ballots in precinct totals, I obtained from the County the list of the voters in question and added their votes to the precinct counts based on their precinct assignments as of Nov. 1.

5) I found in my earlier analysis of ballots vs. voters by precinct that a lot of the discrepancies could be explained by polling places. Ballots that should have been counted in one precinct were counted in a different precinct that shared the same polling place. This is still a problem, but more innocent than some of the other explanations for ballotless voters and voterless ballots. In order to factor out this less serious error, I totaled ballots and voters by polling place. The County failed to satisfy my request for a clean list of precincts and polling places, so I took this PDF file of polling places, converted to text and manually corrected for variations in spelling.

6) I noticed that within polling places, polling ballots appeared to be misattributed to provisional voters and vice versa. Another problem that if not excusable also does not imply there are illegitamate ballots being counted. I rolled up provisional and polling ballots into a single category per polling place.

7) Finally, the Manual Recount Precinct Canvass, unlike the canvasses for the two earlier counts, does not make separate counts of absentee, precinct and polling ballots. I used the counts of each type of ballot per precinct from the machine recount, but the precinct total from the manual recount, realizing that the totals would still be off by 1 or 2 in some precincts. (In addition to the 566 "Larry Phillips" ballots, there were also 266 ballots that disappeared and 325 ballots that magically appeared between the machine and manual recounts, for a net change of 59 brand new ballots)

After all of that, I found the following total discrepancies between ballots and voters: Polling Place Absentee Polling/Provisional Voterless Ballots 1,267 1,975 Ballotless Voters (485) (341) For a total of 4,068 ballots that either undercount or overcount the number of identified voters. 320 of the voterless ballots can be explained by the unregistered military and Address Confidentiality Program voters who don't appear in the voter rolls. So we're left with 3,748 miscounted ballots.

I still consider this number a lower bound on the number of miscounted ballots, because (a) it doesn't take into account the unexplained net increase in ballots in the manual recount, and (b) the roll-up of absentee ballots by polling place was a convenience for these calculations, although I can't think of any plausible reason why absentee ballots should ever be mixed up between precincts, even within the same polling place (When I summed absentees by precinct and not by polling place, I found a total of 1,980 voterless ballots and 1,198 ballotless voters), and (c) there are likely to unnoticed discrepancies of missing ballots and missing voters within precincts, even if they're masked by the net total for the precinct.

The following tables show the hall of shame of polling places with the largest discrepancies between ballots and voters. The numbers in the Absentee, Polling, Provisional columns represent the number of extra ballots/missing voters [in black] or missing ballots/extra voters [in (red)] of the various types of ballots. The "Total" column is not the total of these three ballot types, but is the difference between the total precinct count for the manual recount and total number of identified precinct voters. [as per item (7) above]

The "imputed lead" column estimates how much the miscounted ballots might have added to (subtracted from) Gregoire's lead, based on how the other ballots at that polling place broke to the various candidates. It's true that the net affect of the missing ballots was to reduce Gregoire's lead, but they didn't appear to hurt her nearly as much as the extra ballots seemed to help her. Top 5 polling places with more ballots than voters

Polling Place City Absentee Provisional Polling Total Imputed Lead

King Co Adm Bldg, 500 4 AV Seattle 1 64 1 65 27.6

Bell Tower, 2215 1 AV Seattle 26 (5) 21 42 17.7

Denny Terrace, 100 MELROSE AV E Seattle 3 (2) 39 41 29.8

The Josephinum, 1902 2 AV Seattle 3 (5) 39 40 15.8

Rainier Free Meth Ch, 5900 RAINIER AV S Seattle 1 5 34 40 21.8

Also notable is Ashton Hall, Sea Pac Univ, 611 W DRAVIS ST, Seattle, which wins the prize for counting the next largest number of absentee ballots for which there is no known voter -- 25.

In all fairness, I'll suggest the possibility that some of these polling places may be disproportionately associated with the unregistered military voters and the address confidentiality voters, whose ballots are assigned to a precinct, but whose voters are not identified even by number per precinct. But that can only explain so much. 95 out of about 600 polling places show a net of at least 10 more ballots than voters.

But as fair as I can be, I can't come up with a good explanation for precincts that have more voters than ballots. Top 5 polling places with more voters than ballots

Polling Place City Absentee Provisional Polling Total Imputed Lead

Clark Elementary, 500 2 AV SE Issaquah (10) (16) 12 (14) 1.5

Ballard House, 2445 NW 57 ST Seattle (7) (4) (2) (11) 6.3

Martin Sortun Elementary, 12711 SE 248 ST Kent (5) (7) 1 (10) 1.1

Ravenna Eckstein Comm Ctr, 6535 RAVENNA AV NE Seattle (10) (2) 4 (9) 5.7

Bennett School, 17900 NE 16 ST Bellevue (5) 0 (2) (8) 0.7

The bottom line? The imputed lead for all of the mismatches between ballots and identified voters was 649. That calculation is based on the fact that the unidentified voters includes the unregistered military and ACP voters, who can't be easily subtracted from this number. But in all probability, the number of extra votes that Gregoire picked up from the various extra ballots and missing ballots is hundreds more than her margin of "victory".

[Seattle Conservative]

Stefan has continued to do great work digging into the 'irregularities' in the WA state election.

Sorry, I cut and pasted, but don't know how to reformat the tables, so you'll need to go to the site to see them; or, maybe one of you more techie FReeper FRiends can assist in formatting them here.

[expatpat]

Good work, Stefan.

[drt1]

Where do all of these irregularities lead? Is there action to challenge the election and, if so, does it stand a chance? What is the timing of such activity, if you know or can tell? Thx

[alessandrofiaschi]

PING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ProudVet77]

This has to go to the feds. It would fit under civil rights as someone's votes (the ones that voted for Rossi) were negated by cheating.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

BTTT

[alessandrofiaschi]

Exactly. I wonder why we should put up with another stolen election.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

Top 5 polling places with more ballots than voters
Polling Place	City	Absentee	Provisional	Polling	Total	Imputed Lead
King Co Adm Bldg, 500 4 AV	Seattle	1	64	1	65	27.6
Bell Tower, 2215 1 AV	Seattle	26	(5)	21	42	17.7
Denny Terrace, 100 MELROSE AV E	Seattle	3	(2)	39	41	29.8
The Josephinum, 1902 2 AV	Seattle	3	(5)	39	40	15.8
Rainier Free Meth Ch, 5900 RAINIER AV S	Seattle	1	5	34	40	21.8

Top 5 polling places with more voters than ballots
Polling Place	City	Absentee	Provisional	Polling	Total	Imputed Lead
Clark Elementary, 500 2 AV SE	Issaquah	(10)	(16)	12	(14)	1.5
Ballard House, 2445 NW 57 ST	Seattle	(7)	(4)	(2)	(11)	6.3
Martin Sortun Elementary, 12711 SE 248 ST	Kent	(5)	(7)	1	(10)	1.1
Ravenna Eckstein Comm Ctr, 6535 RAVENNA AV NE	Seattle	(10)	(2)	4	(9)	5.7
Bennett School, 17900 NE 16 ST	Bellevue	(5)	0	(2)	(8)	0.7

[Seattle Conservative]

Thank You!!!!

[Truth29]

Great work, but does any of this analysis matter if the judges are partisan? Will Washington State judges rule on the facts or their political affiliations? What can we do if the judicial system is corrupt?

[filly]

This stuff has got to stop. The Democrats have gotten away with this for too long. Read more here

[Seattle Conservative]

As BayNative mentioned, it is before the courts now - next court date Feb 4, but not sure how that will turn out.

According to the Seattle Times, the Dims are now threatening to push it before the legislature (Dim majority)

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002158911_election24m.html

[popdonnelly]

I see that the Democratic Party has gone back to its long-standing tradition of stuffing ballot boxes. The "progressive" party is honoring its corrupt past.

[dennisw]

Great work, but does any of this analysis matter if the judges are partisan? Will Washington State judges rule on the facts or their political affiliations? What can we do if the judicial system is corrupt?

Win or lose we must expose this election. The truth must out, The better this election is exposed the better it can used in the future to help expose other Donk election scams, thievery and rackets. This election is ammunition for future battles.

[popdonnelly]

This corruption has got to be stopped, or the Democrats will be pulling it all over the country. All their whining about getting everyone to vote is merely an invitation to voting fraud. We should be campaigning for honest elections, not for making it easier to cheat.

"Landslide Christine" is not the Governor of Washington State. She got in by election fraud.

[Seattle Conservative]

"Win or lose we must expose this election. The truth must out, The better this election is exposed the better it can used in the future to help expose other Donk election scams, thievery and rackets. This election is ammunition for future battles."

Agree. I think that they thought they'd get away w this again, but a few radio talk show hosts out here have been pounding on it daily. And, w Soundpolitics and other blogs, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, and Building Industry Association of WA on the case, they can't just sweep this under the rug this time. I've also heard that the RNC and the Repub Gov Assoc (and a few others) have been very supportive. Rossi attended the Inauguration at the invitation of the Repub Gov Assoc.
I can't help but wonder if Slade Gorton would have beat Maria Can't-do-well in the 2000 election if some of this was exposed then.

[pointsal]

You simply have to keep holding the feet to the fire.