Posted on 04/26/2005 9:57:58 AM PDT by schu
More mistakes revealed in ballot counting
By David Postman and Keith Ervin Seattle Times staff reporters
In his first questioning under oath about the governor's election, King County Elections Director Dean Logan revealed additional errors in the handling of ballots and acknowledged that the county did not follow recommendations by its elections-oversight committee that were designed to avoid some of those very mistakes.
Logan revealed the mishandling of 125 provisional ballots in addition to 660 disclosed earlier. He also said three absentee ballots had been found in counting machines in a discovery never made public.
And he detailed more than 200 ballots that were set aside for more research but were never dealt with; at least some of those should have been counted in what turned out to be the closest gubernatorial election in the nation's history.
Over two days of questioning last week in a Seattle law office by Republican and Democratic attorneys, Logan defended King County's election system and his staff, saying there was neglect in the handling of some ballots but not any misconduct.
A 474-page transcript of Logan's deposition in a lawsuit brought by Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi was released late yesterday by Rossi's office. He lost to Gov. Christine Gregoire by 129 votes after a hand recount reversed the outcome of the original count and a machine recount.
As Republicans bore in on questions about ballot tracking and security, Logan said he was sure that election observers made it virtually impossible for anyone to purposefully vote more than once.
"So if people sneezed at a polling place, we got a phone call about it," he said. "So if somebody was trying to stuff the ballot box, I think it would be very unlikely that we would not have heard about that."
Republican attorney Rob Maguire said to Logan near the end of the questioning, "Do you know whether the returns in King County were accurate within 129 votes?"
Logan: "No, I do not."
Maguire also questioned Logan about a report by the King County Citizens' Election Oversight Committee. The panel was appointed after foul-ups in the election division in 2002, before Logan was hired.
Maguire had Logan read a series of recommendations by the committee that were designed to avoid errors in counting provisional ballots, including the suggestion that provisional ballots be printed a different color so they could be differentiated from other ballots.
The report was released last May and Logan said that left little time to implement changes.
"We had to consider what changes in polling processes were the most easily achieved in time for a brand-new election in September in a manner that could contemplate the literally thousands of election-board workers being able to absorb and comprehend those changes in time to administer the fall elections," Logan said.
Rossi filed his legal challenge to the election in January. A trial begins May 23 in Chelan County Superior Court on Rossi's claims that errors and illegal votes mean the election should be overturned and Gregoire removed from office.
Republicans have focused their investigation on King County. April 18 was their first chance to grill Logan on previously reported counting errors and about details of the process the county uses for tracking ballots, policing voter rolls for felons and the deceased and other practices.
But it is clear that Democrats are unhappy with the county, too.
The two days of questioning began with Democratic Party attorney Kevin Hamilton saying the county failed to turn over documents as promised in court.
King County deputy prosecuting attorney Don Porter said during the deposition that he disagreed with that characterization but did not give specifics.
Republicans focused many of their questions on trying to determine what precautions King County takes to track ballots from the printing plant through the final recount.
Among answers from Logan:
• The county has a "ballot-on-demand" system that allows workers to print additional ballots in the elections office and at the mail ballot satellite office. Logan said probably less than a dozen people have access to the machines and that the system is password-protected. But he said there is not a "specific inventory of the number of ballots that are produced on the ballot-on-demand system."
• King County does not have a report of how many absentee ballots were mailed in by voters. The county does keep track of the number of absentee ballots counted and those rejected.
• Three uncounted absentee ballots were found in the base of voting machines long after Election Day.
• Some valid ballots were mistakenly rejected because of incorrect data in the voter-registration database.
• Election workers had difficulties getting exact numbers from the new database.
• Absentee voters were credited with voting if they returned envelopes with no ballots inside.
Logan confirmed that more provisional ballots were mishandled than last reported. The county previously had acknowledged 660 provisional ballots mistakenly went through tabulators without being verified.
Logan did not have a specific number. But a spreadsheet given to the attorneys showed the number of mishandled provisional ballots is now 785. Election officials found that 122 of the voters were not registered.
Democrats asked Logan about 208 absentee ballots that had been set aside and labeled, "Not registered, needed further research."
Logan said that "is sort of a miscellaneous category" where ballots were put that couldn't be verified "but that there was indication that there may be other research that could help us identify who that voter was."
Logan said that since the election his staff has determined that some of those should have been counted, but he didn't know how many.
"I believe there are some that fall into that category, again, where we got subsequent information after certification of the election that indicated a name change or where through further staff review, somebody else was able to decipher what the handwriting was or something to that effect."
Attorney David McDonald, manager of the Democrats' legal team, said he didn't believe Rossi gained much legal ammunition from Logan's depositions.
"If the transcript was available this morning and they didn't have a press conference this afternoon, my conclusion is they probably didn't pick up much," McDonald said.
But Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane said Logan's testimony adds details to the Republican case.
"We said all along you can't tell who won this election. In light of these depositions we find out that the situation in King County was much more chaotic than we originally thought, from lack of accounting for blank ballots, to even the head of elections being unable to say with certainty who won this election."
David Postman: 360-943-9882 or dpostman@seattletimes.com
Looks like Mr. Logan has two choises here.
Either "Fall on his own Sword". Or have the Big Boys from party HQ throw his ass under the bus.
I'll wager that one of those options will occur prior to the May Trial date.
" The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
Stalin
Ukraine's Orange Revolution
http://www.theorangerevolution.com/orangerevolution.html
Interesting to note that the Bush Administration "Justice" Dept. shows zero interest in actual justice in these cases and many others, including the Sh$%head Clinton crimes.
Sandy Berger is one of the government buddies; that's why he walked after stealing and destroying highly-classified national security documents.
His acts would have put any normal person in federal prison for a decade or two.
Bush doesn't care, though. And you ought to be asking yourself why not.
Just don't be surprised when those who stole the WA governor election skate as well.
How can we, when the Democrat legislature and Democrat governor are in overdrive raising our taxes and passing massive spending bills?
{P.S. Noobie!)
Everyone should look, this is the face of the Democrat Party. If you don't think it can happen in your state, you are naive
It already happens in other states and has for as long as I can remember and I am 63.
It was clearly some other evil entity stuffing fraudulant ballots in the ballot boxes in their favor. "We are victims too"!!
One must ask how can anyone this monumentally stupid be picked forthis position. My God my 15 year old could do this job, and she is a self described "Conservative, pro-life, pro-death penalty bi-sexual Goth chick". (I think she throws in the Bi-sexual just to get my goat) But even this teenage girl could do a better job.
Either that or it wasn't incompetence at all. It WAS fraud. So this pissant has a choice, is he a mental midget who cannot count, or a criminal?
You're right. Easy to be flippant when it doesn't concern you. Guess I'm just getting sick of all the voter fraud crap that the Dems have been spouting for the last few years. Apologies to all. Will be more consientious in the future.
Post #30 is for you too.
After this litigation they should order a revote. But that would only happen if the courts are not corrupt.
Oh, I won't be, HR. Democrats still control the courts in that state. But they should still be raked over the coals and relentlessly exposed for the election thieves that they are. Then it will be up to Washington voters to decide in the next election whether they want honest government (excuse the oxymoron) or a sleazy proto-Stalinist kleptocracy.
Thanks.
This mess is really unbelievable. Every day a new revelation of dereliction or outright fraud.
No harm, no foul, swc.
See post #30. I would issue an individual response to each of you, but I'm limiting my apologies to one per thread.
ping me?
A couple of facts to fill you in. But first yes you are correct that a just outcome should be used by Republicans to 'ride the tide' for election reform.
The details are that the Judge (Justice Bridges) in the case does not have the authority to order a new election. However, he can nullify the election causing the Governor's office to be vacated. The Lt. Governor would then act as caretaker until a new election is held this November.
The State Supreme Court is packed with dems and they may rule against the Judge Bridges should he nullify the election. The ruling could likely be based on proportional de-assignment of illegal votes determined.
That is, if votes are determined to be illegal, then depending on how the precinct broke for those illegal votes, the illegal votes would be subtracted according to the precentage that went for each candidate.
The dems argue this is not allowed. They argue it must be shown exactly which way each vote went. There's a problem with privacy in this. Also for illegal felon votes, who will trust the felons to tell the truth under oath and what if they plead the 5th? Also there are well over a thousand more vote ballots than there are voters. How to determine these ballots? They are commingled with all other valid votes. What the dems argue must be done cannot be done, it is impossible. If they win on this point then there is a virtually zero probability of ever nullifying an election even in the face of gross fraud.
So the key is to satisfy the statute by 'proportional analysis'. The state statute actually says if it 'appears' that illegal votes would change the outcome. In my mind, proportional analysis would fit the term 'appears'. The remedy would be to hold a new election. So it would be justice served in that all parties would have a chance to run the election this November with new controls in place to avoid the internal control weakness of King County.
But I fear the State Supremes will overturn Judge Bridges should he rule in favor of the Republicans. The media will put out bogus polls and slanted information as they routinely do and Pubbies will go home angry and demoralized.
After all our local news TV broadcast just interviewed people 'on the street' yesterday about the monstrous new taxes passed this last week and people are smiling and happy for new taxes because now maybe the roads will finally get fixed. You see? We're all happy here with what the dems are doing!
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