Fidel and I hope that you're right, Ken!
(He hopes to marry her.)
Posted on 04/28/2005 3:16:02 PM PDT by schu
FRAUD by Stefan Sharkansky
Put away the John Grisham. This week's best beach thriller is the 436-page transcript of King County Elections Director Dean Logan's deposition in the election contest lawsuit.
Logan's testimony one-upped the predictions I made in my last Sound Bite column [April 14]. I was about to get county records that I expected would prove that more ballots were counted in November than were cast by voters.
But instead of a precise accounting showing more ballots than voters, the accounting was revealed to be such a mess that there was effectively no accounting at all. Logan confirmed as much in his testimony and also admitted enough other improprieties that King County's handling of the 2004 election can be fairly characterized as a fraud. You heard it here first: A new gubernatorial election now appears inevitable.
Had the November election been properly managed, county officials would be able to document that each of the 565,014 absentee ballots they counted was cast by an actual voter and that no extra ballots were, say, tossed into the pile by an overzealous employee. But county ballot records fall into two groups: those that show that more ballots were counted than there were voters, and those that are so incomplete as to be worthless.
Among the most damning evidence are the "batch slips," which track the bundles of incoming ballots from signature verification to tabulation. The batch slips are 2004's hanging chads--conclusive proof of an inconclusive election. They show that hundreds of ballots were lost before they were tabulated. Ninety-four of those uncounted ballots, mostly from Republican precincts, were eventually discovered in a county warehouse five months after the election. Hundreds of other ballots appeared out of nowhere, as if by miracle, and were tabulated anyway. Finally, the audit trail, required by state rules to document every one of the absentee ballots issued, fails to account for at least 10,000 of the ballots that were supposedly processed.
Logan also described examples of comically lax ballot security. The elections office has a "ballot-on-demand" printer that didn't keep track of how many ballots it printed. We'll never know how many of these on-demand ballots were part of the surge of hundreds of new Gregoire ballots that magically appeared in the recounts.
Dino Rossi's spokeswoman Mary Lane says last week's revelations support Rossi's claim that "things were such a complete mess in King County that nobody can say with certainty who won the election." It's hard to see how a fair judge could disagree. On the other hand, the Democrats are uncharacteristically silent. State Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt even broke his promise to get back to me with an official comment on Logan's testimony. Perhaps he's busy devising a brand new set of talking points. Even the feckless Democrats will eventually have to stop defending the indefensibly tainted election and find a believable message for marketing Mrs. Gregoire.
As for Dean Logan, he would do well to return to the pre-elections career he mentioned in his deposition--department store shoe salesman.
editor@thestranger.com
bump
This is a new trick. Shazaam! More votes on demand! Definitely a "10" for creativity.
As long as there is an opportunity for vote fraud...........
It will happen every time.
Here in the People's Republic of Washinton they will find all sorts of ways to rig elections. This must be how GregGore pulled ballots out-of-her-ass ("discovered" them).
I don't know about a new election for governor, but I do believe this election mess will cost Cantwell her Senate seat.
Fidel and I hope that you're right, Ken!
(He hopes to marry her.)
The FBI cracked a 20 year old gangster murder case in Chicago last week. Meanwhile elections are being stolen in state after state. Good job, G-men !
I just read The Uncivil War : How a New Elite is Destroying Our Democracy by David Lebedoff. Very interesting book, arguing that the electorate has since LBJ consistently voted down the candidate that gave off elitist, antimajoritarian vibes.The Democrats have made a fuss about "count every vote", but the reality is that vote fraud by Republicans is almost unknown and is endemic in Democratic jurisdictions. Because the elitists in the Democratic Party ultimately are so sure that they are the smart ones who should rule, that they really cannot convince themselves that letting the majority rule is a higher value than making sure that they are in charge.
A bump for later read.
I wonder if this includes the 50 Votes found in Peirce County.
That's why the dims kept calling for recounts. They knew there were enough fraudulent ballots to put them over he top. They just had to keep counting until they all came in.
Hmmmm....I wonder if "Gregoire" is pre-printed on the "insta-ballots." Saves time!
I don't think anybody here needs to know that what happened in Washington's gubernatorial election last year is exactly what Algore and the RATS tried to do in Florida in 2000 until the Supremes shut them down.
I got a mental picture of Mary Wilson bitch-slappin' Gore. Lovely.
bump
Now, there's no need to get snippy about it!
Seriously, I knew the Battle of Florida was over when Dade County stopped their behind closed-doors recount due to protests from Republicans.
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