Wednesday, August 16, 2006
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SEATTLE, Wash. -- Only three days after Gov. Dino Rossi was finally inaugurated, we have yet another strange wrinkle in Washington's bizarre gubernatorial race. More than 93 weeks after the closest election in state history, which included 27 hand recounts and 6 "paw and tail" recounts all of which declared Rossi to be the victor, the Democrats appealed unsuccessfully to the International Court in the Hague, the Council of Guardians in Teheran and the Pillsbury Bake-Off Committee. Gov. Rossi was finally inaugurated this past Sunday when the state's only remaining Democrats were out-of-town at a wife-swapping convention.
Now, a batch of newly discovered ballots may challenge the outcome of this race yet again. A paper bag, found in the trunk of a stolen car in the parking lot of the Washington Education Association headquarters in Federal Way, and containing 324 ballots, all marked in the same purple crayon for Christine Gregoire, has the potential to overturn the result of the last recount and declare Gregoire the winner -- by 2 votes.
Christine Gregoire immediately declared victory, saying that "after 34 ties, I finally have the mandate that I knew we'd come up with eventually". Predictably, extreme right-wing conservatives have dismissed the new ballots, pointing out that some were signed by "D.B. Cooper", "Fidel Castro" and "Hugh Jarss". But most of the more level-headed analysts in the state's mainstream media, led by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, are taking a wait and see approach, expressing the need to count every vote.
Democrat activist David Goldplatednudnikstein, who writes the popular Asses' Whore weblog, was elated: "I would never say anything that would make me look like a fool, and these new ballots are as perfectly legitimate as all of the other ballots that they kept finding in King County. This means that Gregoire finally wins, by like a million votes".
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 19, 2004 09:30 PM | Email ThisThe GOP has a double standard. And this story is a rather pathetic attempt at being humorous. Apparently "Stefan" lacks a funny bone.
Posted by: Joey on December 19, 2004 10:12 PMOn the other hand, I guess it's hard to laugh when the truth hurts so much.
Posted by: Kevin S on December 19, 2004 10:44 PMFYI: "Count all the votes" is idiotic. Insert the word "legal" and it's a whole different ball game...but one you'd likely lose.
Posted by: Julie on December 19, 2004 10:50 PMBtw--tonight when my family and I were at a local eating establishment in Redmond, much to our amazement, we found under the table several King County ballots with the words "Dino Rossi" written all over them in large block letters. We dutifully turned them over to the Ukraine County canvassing board, which promptly declared them Gregoire votes, explaining that since they were marked Rossi, that meant that the voters' hands had slipped while writing it and that they had really meant to vote for Gregoire.
Posted by: Michele on December 19, 2004 11:11 PMI'm all for a good ribbing, but this would hurt my feelings if I were a D....and I'm jaded. We've got big state issues to sort out after Rossi prevails and have to work with these folks afterwards. We gotta end up healing come January or our states going to have even worse problems. We should all appeal to our best sense of our parties, not out-and-out attack our opponnets like this.
Tacky dude, tacky.
Posted by: Matt on December 20, 2004 01:00 AMPERHAPS THOSE SOUTHERN STATES THAT DO NOT HAVE RECOUNT LAWS WILL HAVE THE LAST LAUGH. I USE TO LAUGH AT THEM, BUT NO MORE. THEY KNOW THEIR WINNER ON ELECTION NIGHT. THEY DO NOT DESEND INTO A POLITICAL VERSION OF A VIETNAM QUAGMIRE.
FOR A PROGRESSIVE STATE LIKE WASHINGTON WITH A GOOD NATIONAL REPUTATION THIS IS BEGINNING TO LOOK LIKE YOUR ELECTIONS ARE RUN BY INCOMPETENT PEOPLE OR EVEN WORSE, BY CROOKS.
I REALLY HOPE THERE IS SOME VIABLE WAY OUT TO GET A CONSENSUS WINNER, EITHER CANDIDATE. OTHERWISE WASHINGTON WILL BECOME LABELED ACROSS THE NATION AS A JOKE, WHICH WOULD BE A REAL TRAGEDY. IT REALLY IS A FINE BEAUTIFUL STATE.
Posted by: JOE on December 20, 2004 01:20 AMThis is funny as hell and I love it, but then if I could laugh at 8 years of Slick Willie it proves I have a great sense of humor.
Lighten up people, Stefan is correct. You should have a governor in a few months. Maybe.
Posted by: Chuck on December 20, 2004 04:30 AM'Fraid I have to agree with Matt on this one - satire is one thing, but ad hominem insults are really unnecessary.
Posted by: Patrick on December 20, 2004 05:45 AMThat hurt your feelings?... Are you kidding me? You must be one of the guys that offended by Christmas trees, rainy days and bunny rabbits. The people in this world have become FAR too sensitive (on both sides of the aisle).
Posted by: Erik on December 20, 2004 06:37 AMSorry Joey, something called equal protection. Other counties have completed and certified without counting their 'newly found' ballots. If King were to do so when others couldn't, THAT would disenfranchise voters.
If there is anyone to be mad at, it is the bureaucrat who originally didn't think to match these votes in a non-electronic fashion. Shark, why no mention of Vance's remark that in early day-by-day KC returns, Rossi has gained votes?
Posted by: Brendan on December 20, 2004 07:41 AMRepublicans love to count votes--but only if they're votes. King County's endless supply of "ballots" are not votes--they're either late, or defective, or tampered with, or interpreted by biased Democrats. Those little cards or pieces of paper are not votes. See? We caught the smelly little lie in your post and in the Democrats' argument. (For further reading see the 200 Florida recount.)
But I agree that Sharkansky is not funny. However, Democrats are laughable.
This is ridiculous. This the kind of feel good, do it for the children statement that really appeals to Democrats. But it completely ignores the reality of this situation
Goldy has been getting a bit more tactical lately and playing the heart strings is the current Democratic line. But we all know that these votes were indeed scrutinized and rejected, just like many other rejected votes, these votes just happen to be part of the election process.
But, the problem is that we now have target bias. We all know, and especially with King County left to report, that only a certain number of votes are needed to swing the election for Gregoire. So Goldy's pleas are really just more partisan action on the other side.
This is why the Supereme Court will reject these ballots. It's completely biased to introduce ballots this far after the election and the Supreme Court will use "recount" vs. "recanvass" language and the original certification date as a line to stop including new ballots. This line is important because none of us knew the outcome of the election before election night, so the only outcome that assures us that there was no tampering or counting towards a target is to count ballots before certification. That's probably even generous in that 10,000 new absenteee ballots were discovered between election night and certification.
The only other way to settle this fairly is to have another election. I think that would be the best way simply because after the way that King County Election has spit in the face of objectivity, it would be great for the Democrats to see just how badly Washingtonions want to make sure Gregoire is NOT elected, so we can begin the Hanford-like election cleanup process.
I thought the article was very humorous. I admit, I tend to underestimate the liberals' ability to be able to read something humorous and not get totally offended and self-righteous about it. But does that mean that we have to coddle them all the time? No way! Stefan, keep up the good work.
Posted by: Ferrous on December 20, 2004 09:45 AMBut it's the thought that counts.
Posted by: David Goldstein on December 20, 2004 12:29 PMFor example, what I really wrote was:
As my regular readers know, I have strong opinions, and express them passionately. Thus I take considerable care to get my facts straight before presenting them as such, for fear of later being made to look the fool.
Followed a paragraph later by:
While I hope a King County election worker will correct me if I’m wrong, here is apparently what happened.
Believe it or not, when the guy from HorsesAss.org calls with a few questions, county and state officials don't necessarily drop everything and call me back. I pieced together the process as best I could from the information I had, without the benefit of the Huenneken memo. But even though I got some of the specifics wrong (and I plan to write about that later tonight) my main thesis remains unchallenged: these 723 ballots were not "rejected"; they were simply left unverified.
Now tell me... who is being more accurate and honest here... somebody like me who "hoped" a Huenneken would come forth and correct me if I was wrong, and who qualified his analysis with the caveat "apparently"...? Or somebody like you, who inexcusably repeats a quote attributed to me in an a clearly satirical piece, and presents it as a gotcha?
I make plenty of honest mistakes. You want to catch me in a real one... put a little elbow grease into it, you lazy ideologue.
Posted by: David Goldstein on December 20, 2004 07:02 PMWhat I was complaining about was a lazy ideologue.
Posted by: David Goldstein on December 20, 2004 07:42 PMKing County type election manipulations sent 22 Demoncrats to prison in Texas. I was part of that prosecution Team. I know of over 300 other Demoncrats who served prison terms for this type of thing in the last 15 years in 10 other states. I suspect we will eventually see the same thing in Washington state. (I know of no Republicans accused of election fraud in those states in that time frame).
Posted by: leaddog2 on December 20, 2004 08:00 PMHelp me here...if you have a group of people trying to catch a plane, and the plane is leaving the gate at a SPECIFIC time, and most passengers make it, but a few others, through no fault of their own, don't make it. The plane will still leave. The people are still valid people(in MY story, here, they are real people) but they can not get on that plane. It's gone. It will not come back to get them. When you re-count the number of people on THAT flight, you can't count them, because THEY WERE NOT ON IT.
Even IF you found out later that these people were NOT terrorists (which, in my story, you don't know this yet) you still can't count them as passengers on that flight, and you never will be able to...they DID NOT MAKE THAT FLIGHT.
Question for you - try to answer honestly...if you are in favor of counting everyones vote (even if they were not counted in either of the first two counts)are you in favor of counting military votes that were not postmarked on time? How many thousands would you say should be counted? They were not counted as valid votes for different reasons, but lets say they were registered voters casting lawful ballots, and they left the far east prior to election day. ?????
Posted by: Julie on December 20, 2004 10:16 PM