The State Supreme Court has rejected the Democrats' request to review all previously rejected ballots. A welcome relief.
The Seattle Times' David Postman has more
--
The Department of Social and Health Services appears to be obstructing State Auditor Brian Sonntag's efforts to figure out how the DSHS is spending its $6.1 billion Medicaid budget. This is the sort of runaway unaccountable government that we need Dino Rossi to get in there and fix.
--
20% of the statewide vote have now been twice recounted. Rossi's lead in the recounted counties has narrowed very slightly to 15.5562% from the 15.5573% he held in those counties in the machine recount. With yesterday's surprise discovery of 561 new ballots in King County (why does King have more weird incidents like this than the other counties? What other serious mistakes have they made that we haven't learned about yet?), every single vote really does count. With the opportunity for greater human error in King's manual recount, and with 1 known and 1 likely Democrat for every Republican counter, we really do have to guard against mistakes, subtle bias and overzealous subjective judgments in the counting.
--
The Rossi campaign still needs Republican volunteers to observe the King County recount in Tukwila. Call campaign HQ at 425.646.7202 to offer your services. Freedom isn't free, and if you think you can't spare a few hours of your time to defend your vote and your liberty, who do you think will do it for you?
UPDATE: To answer the question that has been raging in the comments: "What does the Supreme Court ruling say about King County's 561 new magical mystery ballots?" The P-I's story has this:
State Elections Director Nick Handy said current law gives King County the discretion to review the 561 ballots in question.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 14, 2004 10:02 AM | Email This"Matters that have already been decided by county canvassing boards should stand," Handy said.
But counties can review disqualified ballots in cases such as this one involving an obvious inconsistency or irregularity.
"This would be the classic example of an irregularity," Handy said. "People were registered to vote and there was an administrative error. The county can go back and correct that."
"The court, echoing the position of Secretary of State Sam Reed and Republicans lawyers, said Washington state law makes clear that a recount should "retabulate" votes already counted and that county canvassing boards cannot be ordered to look again at ballots thrown out during the first two tallies."
Am I off base to think that this includes those "discovered" votes that were not counted in the first two counts? I don't care why they were thrown out...they weren't counted the first two times and so shouldn't be counted now.
Posted by: megs on December 14, 2004 10:56 AM
In one e-mail to Sonntag's office, Heidi Robbins Brown, a Medicaid deputy assistant secretary, said lead auditor Silvana Golda misrepresented information, tricked a staffer and generally took an "accusatory position."
DSHS employees don't know jack about misrepresentation, trickery and accusations (and incompetence) until they've dealt with the Office of Support Enforcement.
Posted by: South County on December 14, 2004 10:57 AMWill King County find more ballots?
How long have they been sitting on these extra "just in case" ballots?
Lot's of questions?
Note that in the Rossi counties, everything is going pretty much by the book. Not a lot of drama and mystery as in King County.
Let's hope that even in their efforts to mfg. ballots, that the Dems still come up short. That would be the ultimate "in your face" for all of the people, both Dems and Repubs who supported Rossi and know that this state does indeed need change!
Could be it's time to resurrect the (secede from King) Cedar County proposals/petitions. Sign me up! I'm pretty damned tired of taxation WITHOUT representation of MY interests. Let Seattle and King County have each other - neither deserves better.
"Thus, under Washington’s statutory scheme, ballots are to be “retabulated” only if they have been previously counted or tallied, subject to the provisions of RCW 29A.60.210."
The RCW may reveal more.
http://www.courts.wa.gov/newsinfo/?fa=newsinfo.order_041214
Posted by: Bill W. on December 14, 2004 11:13 AM"Thus, under Washington’s statutory scheme, ballots are to be “retabulated” only if they have been previously counted or tallied, subject to the provisions of RCW 29A.60.210."
The RCW may reveal more.
http://www.courts.wa.gov/newsinfo/?fa=newsinfo.order_041214
Posted by: Bill W. on December 14, 2004 11:13 AMImagine that they had ruled that the previously judged and rejected ballots should be reviewed in order to treat every vote the same and a new set of standards was set that all votes be judged by. Next imagine that Republicans file a suit asking that all previously judged and accepted ballots be reviewed for the same reason, obviously if there are new standards, some votes could have been previously accepted that under the new rules would not qualify. Now the kicker... I understand it is impossible to identify the previously questioned but accepted ballots.
So if the court had mandated equal treatment of all ballots the only way to comply would be a new election which Rossi would win, at least that was what I was hoping for.
Posted by: Vicky on December 14, 2004 11:21 AMImagine that they had ruled that the previously judged and rejected ballots should be reviewed in order to treat every vote the same and a new set of standards was set that all votes be judged by. Next imagine that Republicans file a suit asking that all previously judged and accepted ballots be reviewed for the same reason, obviously if there are new standards, some votes could have been previously accepted that under the new rules would not qualify. Now the kicker... I understand it is impossible to identify the previously questioned but accepted ballots.
So if the court had mandated equal treatment of all ballots the only way to comply would be a new election which Rossi would win, at least that was what I was hoping for.
Posted by: Vicky on December 14, 2004 11:21 AMAll of you Democrats can whip up the Kool-Aid right now. (Remember: Jim Jones used grape Kool-Aid.)
Posted by: FedUpWithThis on December 14, 2004 11:22 AMhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/voters14ww.html
I did a machine count of this list, and also a machine recount. (No "tabulation error") It appears to contain 1,554 names in total. 668 of these names appear to contain "Seattle" addresses. Some of these might not be in the City of Seattle, but King County Elections appear to have done a good job of listing the municipality for voters living in cities which used to also use "Seattle" as the mailing address -- i.e. Shoreline, Burien, etc.
Perhaps a manual recount of this rejected absentee list would be more accurate. Any diehard Dems out there would would like to manually recount to check my figures?
In Seattle, 320,431 ballots were cast in the original count, while 898,238 were cast countywide in the original count. (Both figures are a bit higher for the machine recount.)
So the rejected absentee ballots are 42.99% from the City of Seattle (or possibly unincorporated areas or newer cities -- but not likely -- still using this mailing address, while 35.67% of the total ballots cast in King County (at least in the initial count) were definitely from the City of Seattle.
Obviously, the 561 absentee ballots rejected due to lazy election workers being derelict in their duties after not finding an optical image of the signature on their computer screens is a subset of the 1,554 total absentee ballots rejected due to (alleged) signature mismatch. So the percentage of this subset from the City of Seattle may be higher or lower.
Common sense: How can anyone question the validity of these 561 ballots? They were rejected because of 2 very specific errors by the elections office: 1) The voters' signature cards were for some reason not properly scanned into the computer system, and then 2) The county, upon finding no signature in the computer system, rejected those ballots rather than digging out the original signature card to compare with the signature on the ballot.
These 561 voters did nothing wrong. They cast and signed their ballots properly (as far as we know -- probably when signatures are compared, a few will be found defective). The mistake was entirely with the elections office.
The law: The Supreme Court refused to order previously rejected ballots to be included in the recount. It didn't specifically say that they couldn't be reviewed, although it arguably implied that. The county has cited a provision allowing it to amend results, although I'm not sure on what statutory basis. So the law, at least to me, is unclear on this. But even if the law does not allow the 561 ballots to be counted, the Supreme Court could find that citizens' constitutional right to vote outweighs the statutes.
There is a difference between votes rejected by generally reasonable (albeit imperfect) procedures, and a large block of votes rejected due to a clear error. How can anyone argue with that?
Posted by: Bruce Burger on December 14, 2004 11:44 AMHave the MACHINES do the sorting into piles that the 'three man teams' are doing now.
1) Rossi
2) Gregoire
3) L/Other
4) Not a machine-readable vote
So since the machine's already sorted the pile, your three man teams are just trying to verify/reconcile "This is a pile of 100 Rossi votes". Every hundred gets a set of bands, every 1000 gets a sealed box. 10,000 to a larger box.
No 'original' ballots should ever be enhanced. Instead it get's stamped 'Replaced by proxy ballot #1234' where proxies are noticeably different (green framed as opposed to the absentee's red frame for instance). Any later decisions about 'that's just a stray mark' or whatever can at least see the unadulterated original then.
If a recount focuses on getting the 'easy' counts done right, every subsequent recount is going to have a decent chance of 100% accuracy on the _easy_ votes. So much more time and scrutiny can be applied to the votes that aren't machine readable for one reason or another.
And it follows the law as stated in an above posting.
"Thus, under Washington’s statutory scheme, ballots are to be “retabulated” only if they have been previously counted or tallied, subject to the provisions of RCW 29A.60.210."
Recanvass -- Generally.
Whenever the canvassing board finds that there is an apparent discrepancy or an inconsistency in the returns of a primary or election, the board may recanvass the ballots or voting devices in any precincts of the county. The canvassing board shall conduct any necessary recanvass activity on or before the last day to certify the primary or election and correct any error and document the correction of any error that it finds.
The application of this statute which would allow discretion to recanvass the "found" ballots is that final certification has not occurred until the certification of the recount currently underway.
This "recanvass" of "discrepancies" and "inconsistencies" should be viewed as different from a recanvass of already rejected ballots, unless I suppose a particularly identified error is presented to the canvassing board. There, the Court's brief order suggests the counties will not be ordered to recanvass, but are not necessarily prevented from correcting particularly identified errors.
For what it's worth -- Kris
Posted by: Kris Tefft on December 14, 2004 11:53 AMPlease see my post.
Posted by: MC on December 14, 2004 11:55 AM". . .It follows that this court cannot order the Secretary to establish standards for the recanvassing of ballots previously rejected in this election. And petitioners’ call for uniform signature-checking standards (seemingly beyond the statutory requirement that the signature on an absentee ballot be the same as the signature in voter registration files) is beyond the relief that can be afforded in this action.
No recanvassing means the 561 phantom "votes" will remain void and that they are (as lawyers like to say) a nullity.
So, to sum up, the only votes that can be hand-recounted are the ones that were counted the first two times. Any other alleged "votes" are
void.
The recount statue says she doesn't have to pay "if the recount changes the result of the nomination or election". In this case, the recount will probably not change the result -- Rossi would probably win if there were simply a recount. So she shouldn't get her money back.
On the other hand, if the county had counted the ballots properly the first time, Gregoire would have won and wouldn't have asked for a recount. And conversely, given that they rejected those ballots, if she hadn't asked for a recount, they might never have found the error, or they might have found it anyway, probably resulting in a huge court battle over when it's too late to correct errors. Under any of these scenarios, it doesn't seem fair to charge her.
I'm sure this is the least of anyone's concerns now, but it's an interesting question...
Posted by: Bruce Burger on December 14, 2004 11:59 AMI think the phrase "we find no support for this notion" speaks for itself.
Posted by: megs on December 14, 2004 12:00 PMI pray that Rossi is victorious and that voting can be cleaned up. I'd hate for WA to become another NJ.
Posted by: megs on December 14, 2004 12:03 PMSorry if you're just waking up, but those 561 alleged "votes" are VOID. They will not be counted. They are not votes. To recount them would be "recanvassing" which the Court just ruled out. Duh!
Posted by: FedUpWithThis on December 14, 2004 12:05 PM1) The decision cited several examples of how the existing rules give adequate protection to the right to vote and have your ballot fairly counted. Finding 561 ballots that were rejected for the same, clearly erroneous, reason is new evidence that completely changes that.
2) The decision does not preclude counties from amending their original counts separately from the recount process. Nor does it allow them to -- it doesn't address this issue, only recounts. Nor does it even preclude their amending their counts as part of the recount process, though it arguably implies that.
Posted by: Bruce Burger on December 14, 2004 12:22 PMThe 561 newly discovered absentee ballots that were rejected due to procedural error, may in fact be legitimate votes.
But, they were not counted in either of the first two counts, and they are now long after the certification of the initial canvassing process.
The Supremes were clear on this. There is definitely a reason why we have the words canvas and recount. At this point, the determination phase has ended and all we are doing is re-counting.
And it would not be equitable for King County to count these 561 rejected ballots without also going back and checking possibly erroneously rejected ballots in all other counties as well.
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 14, 2004 12:22 PMTo Everyone Else:
A Republican needs to take the Supreme Court decision and get a court order stopping the King County thieves from
counting "recanvassed" (non)ballots.
Of course, the Seattle media are reporting otherwise and getting it wrong. They're not competent to understand the issues, so they rely on their buddies in the Democrat party to explain it, as usual.
The actual important sentence from the Court's order is: "Thus, under Washington’s statutory scheme, ballots are to be “retabulated” only if they have been previously counted or tallied, subject to the provisions of RCW 29A.60.210." Section 210 is the section I quoted in a previous post which arguably allows recanvassing of ballots not already canvassed and rejected, in discrepancies or errors are identified to the canvassing board.
Don't misunderstand the point because my knee isn't jerking in line with my political beliefs. The 561 ballots are a joke. But without further development of the Court's position in a further proceeding, the current practice may well be that section .210 allows their canvassing and tabulation.
Posted by: K. Tefft on December 14, 2004 01:24 PMThe actual important sentence from the Court's order is: "Thus, under Washington’s statutory scheme, ballots are to be “retabulated” only if they have been previously counted or tallied, subject to the provisions of RCW 29A.60.210." Section 210 is the section I quoted in a previous post which arguably allows recanvassing of ballots not already canvassed and rejected, in discrepancies or errors are identified to the canvassing board.
Don't misunderstand the point because my knee isn't jerking in line with my political beliefs. The 561 ballots are a joke. But without further development of the Court's position in a further proceeding, the current practice may well be that section .210 allows their canvassing and tabulation.
Posted by: K. Tefft on December 14, 2004 01:24 PMIt's my understanding that these votes WERE already canvassed and rejected and therefore cannot be included. These weren't just 'found' ballots sitting in a corner that had never been looked at before. They were rejected for one reason or another and folks were given the chance to check their votes by Nov. 16.
Posted by: megs on December 14, 2004 01:30 PMSo those 561 new ballots, are they legit? Don’t know, but it’s far more likely they’re part of a vote fraud scheme now that any potential election stealers know their target – and it’s awfully convenient that 561 ballots in a county that went 58-40 for Gregoire works out to a 100 vote gain for Gregoire.
But anyway, let’s look a the likely results of these ballots being counted and not being counted. Let’s assume that counting them makes Gregoire the winner and not counting them keeps Rossi as the winner.
If they’re counted, then there’s a high likelihood voters across the state will distrust the result, since the center of Democratic power in the state will have kept scrounging and scrounging until it found enough votes to make their candidate the winner. Coupled with the tendency of the State Supreme Court to overturn voter initiatives that won by wide margins, the average Washington voter could be excused for thinking we live in a banana republic where elections are just elaborate hoaxes staged for our amusement. Four years from now, we will have another election, but unless the Republican wins, few voters will really trust the result. Republican wins are rare in Washington, and Democrat wins will now carry the stench of fraud.
If the 561 ballots are not counted, then there’s a high likelihood Democrats across the state will be outraged that the incompetent buffoons in King County can’t count and cost them the election. Since the Democratic party runs the county, perhaps the buffoons will be sacked. There will be a lingering feeling among Dems that Rossi shouldn’t be governor, and he will encounter immense hostility from the Dems in the state legislature, but in four years, we can go back to the polls and hopefully get an unambiguous result, regardless of who wins.
And all of this would have been avoided if Gregoire had made a concession speech after the first recount, admonished Governor Rossi to reach across the aisle, blah blah blah. But no – gotta keep pushing, power means more than anything. Better to demolish the foundations of democracy than let a Republican sit in the Governor’s Mansion.
http://www.metrokc.gov/elections/news/2004_12_13.htm
It states that "state law specifically authorizes the canvass board to amend the certification of an election when a discrepancy or inconsistency is identified in the original canvas". (I don't know where the law states that; I'm just quoting Dean Logan.) The canvass board will be asked to do that tomorrow.
Posted by: Bruce Burger on December 14, 2004 01:56 PMIf I understand you correctly, you are calling the Logan explanation of the 561 ballots a complete lie. Maybe I'm too trusting (I don't know a thing about Dean Logan), but the official explanation seems totally plausible (albeit outrageous) to me.
"all of this would have been avoided if Gregoire had made a concession speech after the first recount"
Are you saying we should revoke the statute that specifically provides for a manual recount? After all, if we have the law, when should it be invoked if not in an election for the most powerful position in the state that is decided by .002% ?
I can see arguing the the Dems shouldn't have sued to recanvass the rejected provisional ballots, because they were using the courts to go beyond the statute. (Similarly, both parties went to court in Florida in 2000.) But you are saying they shouldn't have availed themselves of the statute which very specifically offers a manual recount.
Posted by: Bruce Burger on December 14, 2004 02:09 PMAs I understand it, it doesn't matter WHY those 561 ballots were set aside. They were NOT included in the original count or the first recount and therefore, regardless of why they were rejected, cannot be included in this recount.
I don't have a problem with the Dems calling for a manual recount, however ill conceived it may be. I do have a major problem with their attempt to include ballots not originally included. By law, as I read it, these ballots are NOT allowed in this recount.
Posted by: megs on December 14, 2004 02:14 PM--> They weren't _FOUND_ today, they were found early enough for them to be part of the Supreme Court case!
Posted by: Al on December 14, 2004 06:19 PMaren't our votes secret?...how can anyone get a list of voters, especially a Democrat politician?
if such lists occur elsewhere, we need to find them , especially in Eastern Washington and Central Washington...
also....does everybody now see how Cantwell and her Democrats stole the election from Gorton?.....we should have fought then and this crap going on today wouldn't be happening..
I am so sick of Democrat rule in this state....
no matter what, Gregoire will be there governor, not mine..
and its not like anybody every gave Eastern Washington a thing, buy I at least thought Rossi would help our economy...
Posted by: lee on December 14, 2004 06:38 PM