Breaking News: > Republicans win right to challenge Wash. state election

KGW ^ | 5/2/05 | KGW

[Knitting A Conundrum]

Republicans win right to challenge Wash. state election: Republicans have won a victory in their challenge to the election of Governor Gregoire. The judge says Republicans will be allowed to use "proportional analysis" to prove their case that illegal votes swayed the election.

[Teflonic]

DU thread, they are such crybabies and are paralleling this case with their lost elections.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1439413

[trisham]

What is needed is a national campaign for vote reform to shore up safeguards for validating elections. This could include database crosschecks, voter id, voter reregistering and so on.

****************

I couldn't agree more.

[glock rocks]

This issue is being fought on the basis of a provision in the Washington State Constitution that permits the courts to invalidate an election in the event of fraud or incompetence. There is no precedent in this case that can be used outside of Washington state.

I'm just struck dumb that anything has become of this after this long. Very cool.

[trisham]

blm (1000+ posts) Mon May-02-05 03:08 PM

Response to Original message

5. And judges in Ohio threw out cases brought by the Democrats.

One of the biggest problems in this country is that most of the judiciary are Republican tools.

***************

Right.

[Robert357]

Very nice action picture!

However, I am a bit concerned over the judges ruling.

Specificaly, he is requiring a voter signature in a poll book or a signature on an absentee ballot envelope to establish that an illegal voter voted.

Given how quickly King County supplies information, that is going to take a lot of time and cause the Republicans to spend a lot of money to get the information.

[GVnana]

WOW!

[Teflonic]

Really do they actually believe this junk or do they just automatically lie and attempt to twist public record on events?

[Carry_Okie]

The breakdown of voting districts into finer gradations (yes precinct is finer than county in that sense) leads to more coarse data in smaller groups. The 'proportional assignment' is more coarse (= less smooth, less averaged, more raw) at the precinct level than at the county level.

Thanks for the clarification. I had understood you to mean by, "more 'coarse' data," to be effectively, "coarser data," until the clarification. I see what you mean.

Yes, raw precinct data can yield far more evidence of fraud than does county data. For example, during the famed Florida recount in precinct 144F the Democrats had a 267% turnout while the Republicans had an 11% turnout.

[trisham]

I can only guess, but I think they do believe in what they say.

[benjibrowder]

From the words of the liberal mass at the Democratic Rathole

"If Democrats had won a ruling to use this kind of statistical analysis, the Freepers would be screaming about how liberals will do ANYTHING to win. Instead, they're celebrating."

"One of the biggest problems in this country is that most of the judiciary are Republican tools."

This is just painful.

"Those tinfoil hat, conspiracy theory paranoid Republicans probably think {spooky voice} a-Ali-ens {/spooky voice} fixed the election."

"was livid when I saw it. What's good for the goose should be good for the gander, don't you think? We should take a page from their playbook. Unfortunately, with all the Republican judges in Ohio and Florida, it's probably not possible, but we need to get someone to look at all of the statistical analysis that's been done in the presidential race. They think there were illegal votes in Washington State, they should just take a good, hard look at Ohio and Florida -- illegal votes, lack of votes due to disenfranchisement, etc. There's so much evidence that something's not right and no one will listen."

Those were the most wacky of them. The rest were just mumbles of complaints.

[Publius]

Thanks for the link. The thing that struck me about the DU responses was that DUmmies have no knowledge of the US Constitution, the Washington State Constitution or even basic election law.

They sound educationally and intellectually deprived.

[GunnyHartman]

In a related story, Fat Teddy K, after hearing the news, just keeled over from an anuerism and impaled himself on his bottle of JD.

[schu]

As no one can assign a specific ballot to a particular voter, legal or otherwise, how can it be determined that the result was incorrect? Statistical analysis on that small of a sample (a few thousand votes over several million cast) seems ludicrous.

Isn't the best one could find is that there were enough votes counted incorrectly that the real winner can not be determined and therefore the election results must be invalidated?

[devolve]

[IMissPresidentReagan]

I'm not saying in this case Republicans are. Is there potentially a Republican operative out there who violated the law - I don't know. That wasn't the point though I was trying to make.

My point is, from a "PR" stand point, Republicans can loose some face for seeming to drag out the gubernatorial election. While I'm not a big believer in "polls" and the like, popular opinion is often what drives elections, and this could potentially case Republicans to fall out of favor with potential voters and cause elections that may have gone Republican to "go Democrat". I was just trying to say that while I think it's great that voter fraud is being investigated, it could turn out to be a bad move. BUT I in no way meant to implicate, imply, allege, or otherwise allude to any Republican voter fraud and apologize if such was the tone.

Overall, I'm sure the case is in the hands of talented and knowledgeable attorneys, as well as party members. My only concern is that this will somehow backfire, and even when Republicans are right, Democrats still manage to turn it around in public opinion.

[IMissPresidentReagan]

Unfortunately, even though it's based solely on the Washington State constitution, that doesn't mean some other state, who has an activist judiciary won't pick up on it and run with it, much in the way Justice Kennedy, or Ginsburg, or Stevens, et. al. run with foreign law when it suits them. If you track a lot of the "conflicts" of law and tort issues, you will see that states will often borrow from another if the judiciary thinks that state has a good policy.
I only wish we dealt with a judiciary that limited itself to the document it was interpreting.

[mvpel]

If proven fraudulent vote conspirators are thrown in jail, and they're Democrat to a one, then the risk of backfire strikes me as fairly small.

But you're always at risk of backfire when going after Democrat Party criminals, that's just how it is.

[IMissPresidentReagan]

I agree. I'm just cautious by nature.

[Hostage]

You raise some good points. At issue is the question of whether an election could ever be overturned or nullified based on massive errors, fraud, incompetence and so on.

Perhaps this is why elections have been run so shoddy because there are effectively no consequences otherwise.

But now in Washington State, we have many mathematicians, statisticians and persons familiar with election intricacies working to get at the bottom of why Dino Rossi was denied his governorship after winning two counts and being certified.

The question of how a third count, a more inaccurate handcount on a paid basis can put Gregoire into the Governor's mansion is a question in the same as your questions.

The questions of why there are allowed more votes (recanvassed) to be included in a more inaccurate handcount than the previous two counts is also a question is the same vein.

All these questions should indicate that the elections process is a mess. Unfortunately, logic and law do not prevail.

There are three election statutes in Washington State for nullifying an election.

The statute that the proportional assignment applies to is one that states 'it appears that illegal votes were made as to change the outcome'. The interpretation of 'appears' is what is at issue. The alternative would be to depose each and every voter who voted illegally. That is impossible and violates a number of constitutional protections for the individual.

As to the statute referring to 'enough errors' or enough illegally cast ballots exceeding a margin of victory, that is also at issue. Democrats claim that this is not allowed because of the previous 'appears' statute. Also they claim that a 'no one knows who won' determination is not good enough.

Lastly, this is not new to Washington State. The same pattern of irregularities was evident in the Gorton-Cantwell US Senatorial race in 2000. Gorton did not contest as it was seen as too messy. That the Rossi camp has rallied a mathematical effort to get to the bottom of this mess is a credit to their due diligence. Should Rossi regain his Governor title, I believe he will be a great and memorable leader for this state because he has some real sharp people working on his behalf.