Posted on 12/17/2004 11:52:39 AM PST by kattracks
SEATTLE (AP) — With Washington state in the middle of a recount of its amazingly close governor's race, election officials in Seattle's King County entered a warehouse Friday and found a plastic tray containing 150 misplaced ballots.The discovery brings the number of belatedly discovered ballots to 723 in the heavily Democratic county — potentially enough to swing the election to Democrat Christine Gregoire.
Republican Dino Rossi won the Nov. 2 election over Gregoire by 261 votes in the first count and by just 42 after a machine recount of the 2.9 million ballots cast. On Thursday, with every county except King, Pierce and Spokane reporting, Rossi had pulled ahead by 74 votes.
The Republican Party went to court Friday to try to block, for the time being, the opening of those ballots. A judge set an afternoon hearing.
King County Elections Director Dean Logan told The Seattle Times that the ballots in the tray, like the 573 other ballots found earlier this week, were mistakenly rejected because there was a problem with how the voters' signatures had been scanned into the county's computer system. The tray apparently was left behind and forgotten in the warehouse, Logan said.
Election workers, along with observers from the political parties, searched the locked cage inside the warehouse.
The search of the warehouse was prompted by a curious finding: None of the envelopes of the 573 other ballots contained names beginning with the letters A or B, and only two started with C, The Times reported.
King County election officials want to count the ballots, which they say are valid votes. Republicans want those ballots to stay rejected — or at the very least, they want King County to investigate further before adding them to the mix.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Well that's just it. We ELECTED a republican but there's not much we can do about vote fraud. Rossi IS the governor-elect in Washington state. He won't be after next week because of this fraud.
What a crock.
This is why one needs to register in advance of election day! The idea of validating a ballot a month and a half after election day makes no sense.
This reminds me of Gomer Pile saying “Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.” This is disgusting what the Democrats will do to steal an election. What people forget is that our Constitution guarantees a fair election, not a perfect one. The law of probabilities would say that votes for either side could be misplaced or lost. So therefore unless they can prove outright fraud and votes found after the second count should not be included.
I agree...Check each ballot for finger prints and DNA. I bet they find that just a few people are connected to all of those ballots.
But why? I'd say the commissioner is doing a bang-up job with the duties of the post... facilitate whatever theft the Dems want.
If the Republicans up there are fully on top of things, which I'm not sure that they are, this could blow up on the Dems. In the last couple of days, they may just have over-reached to the point where this election gets serious scrutiny. In their mania for power, they may just have lost sight of reality, which is that people will only take so much.
Either electiion fraud or incompetence, either way everyone involved should lose their jobs.
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