Honestly what is the best way to make this recontest happen?

I'm sure the numbers of frustrated Washingtonions are legion, but what is the best way to organize this discontent into the action needed to produce a new election?

Standing by; willing, ready and able. And with $$$.

Let's take back our state.

It should be obvious to all that Sam Reed has to say that everything is hunky dory and that the election was as pure as the driven snow.

After all, Sam Reed is responsible for the election, so if it did not go well (and Yes Virginia, it went horribly wrong) when everyone stops pointing partisan fingers and bothers to question whose fault it was that the election was not able to give us a plausible result, all eyes will be on Sam Reed.

I think I mainly stems from a milquetoast approach and not wanting to upset any of the county auditors. Just remember that Reed was a county auditor for a couple of decades, and that is where he was drawn his base of support in three statewide elections (State Auditor in 1992, SOS in 2000 and 2004) -- from practically all auditors from both parties. So it has been a status quo, go along, and get along approach.

Where should I start? First of all, 14 counties still use punch card ballots. These really don't have any higher miscount rate than optical scan ballots. But they are terrible at encouraging participation. People in punch card counties undervoted for Governor at least 1.4% more than in optical scan counties. Look at the psychology of the ballot. An optical scan ballot stares you in the face, and asks you to consider voting in every race. A punch card ballot doesn't complain at all if you skip a race.

Probably at least 10,000 more people would have voted for Governor if all counties had punch card ballots. Since most punch card counties are GOP strongholds, Rossi's net margin would have increased by at least 1,000. Hindsight is 20-20, of course, but punch card ballots tend to screw Republicans in close races.

Next, Sam Reed has done virtually nothing to protect the rights of military personnel to receive absentee ballots in a timely manner. Federal standards call for mailing out these ballots at least 60 days before the election, since some military mail takes a long time. An official general election ballot cannot be mailed that early, since our primary is only 49 days before the general election -- and primary certification is usually only about 30 days before.

The solution, without changing the primary date, would be to require a preliminary ballot be mailed out well in advance of the general election, listing all candidates who filed. That way, military personnel could still vote in the general election, even if they did not receive the final version of the ballot. Other states do something like this, I believe.

Keep in mind, that while Washington has only 2% of the nation's population, it has 4% of the active duty military -- about 54,000 people out of 1.4 million. This represents about 1.5% of the potential electorate -- and is a group that leans heavily Republican.

Next, while the SOS has rule-making authority (and is given considerable latitude in writing election rules -- as many things are not covered by statute), there are really no rules whatsoever regarding how to count a ballot that is not filled out correctly. The only WAC rule on this says that a punch card vote must be counted if at least two corners are detached. Anything less on punch cards is up to the discretion of the canvassing board. And anything on an optical scan ballot is up to the discretion of the canvassing board.

Furthermore, there are absolutely no safeguards in the ballot counting process. The law requires a mixture of polling place officials by party at each polling place. But there rarely seems to be too many problems with administering things at that level. The law has no safeguards in the ballot counting process -- where primarily the voter intent issue can be of concern. But nothing would have prevented Sam Reed from adopting regulations requiring that representatives of all parties agree on voter intent in ballot counting, and referring any disputes to the county canvassing board.

One of the biggest outrages is ballot enhancement -- the permanent alteration of a ballot to reflect supposed voter intent. Nothing in the RCW requires that ballot enhancement be an option. In fact, the RCW refers only to ballot duplication -- a quite different process to deal with improperly marked ballot.

Ballot enhancement is solely allowed under WAC regulations adopted by Sam Reed. The WAC that Reed adopted allows ballot enhancement only if the original markings on the ballot are not permanent obscured. As anyone with common sense knows, once you add markings to a ballot, it is no longer possible to know what the original marking was.

This is totally bogus. Ballot duplication should be the only method allowed. Ballot enhancement is even worse, when it can be administered by county employees, without any right of challenge or appeal to the canvassing board -- as was the case both in the original count and in the machine recount in King County. (While 700 ballots were enhanced in the machine recount, I think King County enhanced several thousand ballots as part of the original count.

Ballot enhancement also destroys the right to a fair manual recount (and perhaps a fair machine recount, depending on what the scope of that should be). If ballot duplication was used, then the original ballots would be brought out, instead of the duplicated ballots, and the manual recount teams would make a new determination of voter intent.

Of course, ballot enhancement is even worse, where you have no real standards for determining voter intent, as is presently the case in Washington.

Next, Sam Reed has adopted absolutely no WAC regulations governing recounts. This leaves it to each county to set up their own procedures for machine or manual recount, including the scope of the recount process. For example, King County manually inspected every ballot that had an overvote or undervote -- which they have done in every recount since adopting optical scan. Due to the publicity of the GOP lawsuit in federal court, many other counties started this process for the first time. However, many other counties simply ran the ballots through the machines one more time. Lack of uniform state rules for a recount violates equal protection under Bush v. Gore. And every county had different procedures for the manual recount too, not to mention King County changing its procedures in the middle of that recount.

Finally, there is the Will Baker fiasco. The RCW allows political parties to file a candidate for one week after close of filing, if absolutely no one (claiming to be) from that party has filed. So, if you can't find a good candidate in the four years previous to run, you get another week to find someone. (If the only person who filed happens to be a bozo -- too bad -- you are stuck with them.)

The RCW requires that the party's state central committee make this designation. But Sam Reed did a favor to the Republicans by allowing Chris Vance to designate the candidates directly, instead of having the state central committee meet and approve Vance's proposed candidates. While Vance found inoffensive people to run for State Treasurer, and 6th District Congress, we ended up with the lunatic Will Baker (who really isn't even a Republican to boot) as our candidate for State Auditor.

Had Sam Reed obeyed the law, Will Baker would have never been on the ballot, since at least a half dozen people on the state committee (including the Pierce County people) already knew what a lunatic Baker is. I am sure that at least several hundred, if not several thousand, fewer people voted for Dino Rossi -- especially given that it was publicized that Rossi was also Vance's personal "pick" for Governor -- because of the Will Baker fiasco.

Washington would have been a lot better off electing Laura Ruderman as Secretary of State. Unfortunately for Laura, she was not effective at all in identifying and publicizing the real flaws in Sam Reed's office. Laura did run an amazingly close race, given that Sam Reed is an incumbent, voters are less likely to vote someone out of any down-ballot office, all the state's newspapers endorsed Reed, all the state's auditors endorsed Reed, and many Democrats either endorsed Reed or failed to endorse Laura. And of course, Laura didn't get enough Republican endorsements to say grace over.

Probably at least 10,000 more people would have voted for Governor if all counties had punch card ballots. Since most punch card counties are GOP strongholds, Rossi's net margin would have increased by at least 1,000. Hindsight is 20-20, of course, but punch card ballots tend to screw Republicans in close races.

By changing it to:

Probably at least 10,000 more people would have voted for Governor if all counties had OPTICAL SCAN ballots. Since most punch card counties are GOP strongholds, Rossi's net margin would have increased by at least 1,000 if they had used OPTICAL SCAN ballots. Hindsight is 20-20, of course, but punch card ballots tend to screw Republicans in close races.

Let's face the fact that Washington's elections are horribly and embarassingly broken, and Sam Reed sits back and takes the position that all is well.

That notion has to be crushed.

I'm ambivalent about the eventual victor, I don't like either one, but the system is the real loser if Rossi backs down.

The republicans should be mindful not to appear shrill, but they should go to court and make thier case, and expose the system for what it is, systemized institutional fraud.

When I get an absentee ballot for the general election, for my home's PREVIOUS owner - WHO HAS BEEN DEAD FOR OVER 5 YEARS, at a minimum, we can conclude there is something wrong with our voter registration maintenance.

Our system relies on the honor and integrity of each individual voter. Sadly, it is outdated to do so.

If we had a decent Secretary of State, instead of a milquetoast, status quo, go along, get along career bureaucrat, the SOS and county auditors would be getting the names of these dead people removed from the voter rolls.

Just how many dead people voted in this past election in our state, anyway? Voting by dead people is not all that uncommon, although it usually happens in much smaller numbers than what the winning margin of victory is.

Simply because a dead person voted, this doesn't mean the vote was for Gregoire. I am sure that some of the dead people who voted (assuming there is any substantial numner) may have voted for Rossi. But in an election contest, you don't have to prove how a dead person voted, only that the person was dead and is shown to have "voted". If we proved that at least 131 dead people voted, there would have to be a new election.

Can we get the Shark to run his King County voter registration file against the social security death database? Obviously, there will be a lot of matches. I know they don't have information on who voted this time, in the file that Stefan got recently. But it should have that data for all the prior elections for each voter.

If there are any voters who voted in an election after they died (beyond the trivial case of someone who mails in an absentee ballot on October 20, and keels over on October 31), then it is worth pursuing to see how many of them (as well as less active dead voters) showed up to the polls (or mailed in absentees) for the November election. (That info should be available soon, or we can sue for it under public disclosure.)

This could make the Shark as big of a hero as Larry Phillips if he is successful in finding dead people who vote.

Nice summary.

Stefan, would you consider posting Richard's summary of Sam Reed?

Sam Reed has done a great job of dodging the negative publicity bullet thus far. Time for that to change.

I'm pretty sure Roger is wrong. Stefan, can you shed light here?

At a minimum, we'd need to change the reporting structure/sequence so that certain, ummm unmentioned, counties aren't tempted to take advantage of reports from early counties. We need to make sure that voters get to vote (talking about the military here). Finally, I want COMPLETE AND TOTAL TRANSPARENCY. If there's a vote when we're done that has a write in for "Christine Rossi", I want to be able to go online and see that it was REJECTED because there was no one by that name on the ballot.

Good luck to us all....

mfancher@seattletimes.com

I suspect that questions from the less hysterical commentors on this blog would greatly improve the range and thrust of his inquiry - if he really means what he says.

And regarding Rossi and Gregoire being an equally bad choices???? Come on!! (sigh) I am not a hardcore Republican and did not vote for the failed foreign policy of the current president. However, Dino has the vision, the policy initiatives and the leadership ability to get our state's economy back on the right track after (at least) 8 years of a completely ineffectual state executive who called himself the education governor yet actually never did anything to fix/invest in our grossly underfunded education system and whose response to our appalling systemic and far-reaching infrastructure problems was to give out a $1 billion corporate welfare package to a company taking jobs out of our state.

Compare Dino to Gregoire, who has no vision and a track record of incompetency combined with doing whatever it takes to grab the brass ring between her little fingers (even back to sorrority days). Sadly, it will probably take another major corporation to leave this state before everyone wakes up to the fact that business as usual cannot be an option.

Since November 3rd our state has been in limbo as to who would be our next governor. The mantra of the two sides has been “count every vote” vs. “count every legal vote”. Now that the “governor-elect” has changed from Rossi to Gregorie the mantra has reversed itself with little modification. What it boils down to is that neither party has ever wanted every vote counted. They only want those that will benefit them counted. I could go into many examples of this but that is not my reason for writing this.

The voters of Washington, of all parties, need to get beyond the back and forth of which party is right or which counties are county fairly. We need to demand that every vote is counted. There are two main categories of ballots that should be fixed if at all possible.
1) Ballots that were cast on time – including absentee and provisional ballots.
2) Military ballots with various problems.

We the voters deserve a complete count. Our current system of voting works great when the winner wins by a substantial amount. But when it is this close we need to take whatever additional effort is needed to assure a fair count. RIGHT NOW WE DO NOT HAVE A FAIR COUNT!!! If we follow the current laws for an election we will not be any better off than we are right now. It will come down to who wins the last or most court battle(s). WE DESERVE BETTER THAN THAT!!! I would like to suggest a better way to “get us out of this mess”. It may take a few more weeks but I believe it is doable and legal.

First and probably the most difficult, the candidates, parties and the legistature need to agree we will not have a legitimate governor if we proceed on the current path. Then they need to agree the legistature will pick the next governor based on the steps below that will assure that every vote is counted.

1) Each county will give a list of rejected ballots to the respective parties. The parties will be given 10 days to contact these people and correct any mistakes. The corrected ballots will be counted and added to the current totals.

2) Military ballots that came in after November 17th will be counted. Military personal that did not receive their ballots in time will be given the opportunity to cast a ballot. A list of register voters that are overseas military personal that did not vote should be compiled. The legislature should select a group(s) to do whatever is reasonably possible to contact these people and allow them to vote. This may be quite difficult but whatever effort can be made to correct the mistakes of the canvassing boards that did not send the ballots out on time or problems with mailing need to be addressed. Even if it means going to Iraq or Afghanistan or where ever else is necessary.

Second, the Secretary of State and new Attorney General’s office need to do basic checking for illegal votes. A prelimaray list of felons that may have voted, people that may have voted twice, and other people that may have voted illegally needs to be compiled.

After taking these steps we should have an “accurate vote” and have a prelimaray count of possible illegal votes. If the difference in votes between the candidates is greater than 30% (my arbitary number – this number should be agreed upon ahead of time) than the legislature will select that candidate as governor. If not than the legislature will call for a revote. For the time that this process goes past the January 12th ingnaural date either Governor Locke or the Lt. Governor Owen can act as Governor.

The last question is who will pay for this. If we pursue the course we are on we all pay. The parties and candidates will have to pay legal bills. The state will also have legal bills. But most of all the people of Washington will pay because will have a governor that will be in office from a questionable vote. I suggest that the parties and candidates pay for their efforts to correct rejected ballots. All other costs to do an accurate count should be paid 50% by the state and 25% by each party. If a revote is needed the state should pay for this as with any election.

I would hope that our political leaders could come an agreement like the one I have suggested above. The people of Washington and the press need to insist on it!!!

But that's the whole point of a re-contest. It's not changing the rules of the game, it's doing the whole game over again.

We'd have real turnout, observers to make sure things were done honestly, etc. Since there would be no Libertarian, we would have a decisive finish that everyone could live with and that would be the end of it. If Gregoire won under this scenario, I would be most happy with the result because it would truly reflect the will of Washingtonions.

I suspect however that Rossi would be the winner. That's why there's been little talk of this in the MSM, they know that a re-contest would not favor their candidate.

1) Revote:
To do so one needs to prove at least 131 illegal votes were cast: they could include dead voters; dual voters (ex college students that voted by absentee in their home town and in person at college); illegal registered voters: felons on parole/probation, non-citizens who voted; non-residents who voted by absentee; and improperly counted ballots (King's infamous Christine Rossi ballot etc.)

2) The alternative is to "King-size" the count:
Count and amend all counties vote by instructing them to follow King county's procedures:
1) Give all provisional ballots and absentee ballot voters a chance to correct any obvious errors on the ballot envelope
2) All provisional ballots and absentee voters whose signatures could not be found on file should be contacted up to 5 times until they provide a signature
3) Any county that sent out absentee ballots late (like King) should be required to count absentee ballots that came in late.
4) Given the conditions in overseas, all military ballots, no matter when they were received, should be counted, whether postmarked or not
5) Every county canvas board should be instructed to reexamine all overvotes and undervotes with a mandate to make a "plausible guess" (which seems to have been the King County Standard) of the voters intent and then count such ballots
6) All counties should be instructed to reexamine their voting machines, warehouses, offices, closets, etc. to seek any lost or misplaced ballots, thne count them

I can tell you that the teacher's union made d**n sure all dead and non-active voters got culled from the lists ASAP! Very humorous, in a way, though many people who thought they were registered were surprised to find they weren't on the list and didn't get a ballot. I forget what the definition of a 'non-active voter' is - something like, didn't vote in the last 4 election rounds.

Sorry to say, as I already have on a couple of previous posts, that Oregon hasn't solved the "largest-county-comes-in-with-results-at-the-end-that-just-coincidentally-tip-close-elections" problem.

I agree with the comments on Sam Reed. Our own SOS is so blatantly partisan that it's hard to get mad at him. At least he is honest and out in the open about it. It is, after all, hypocrisy that hurts the electoral process.

I'm beginning to get convinced about the value of a re-vote in WA, though my first reaction was to oppose on grounds (broken system would still be broken)noted above.

Maybe those 12,000 observers in Ukraine could come here to monitor a re-vote after they are finished there? The weather is much better, the coffee is probably better, and the regular people are just as nice here as there!

Really? Have courts taken this position before? Are you sure there isn't a higher standard, like fraud or a pattern of error that is likely to change the outcome?

It is an unfortunate fact of life that in any election, some invalid votes are accepted and some valid votes are discarded. I agree that we should try harder to minimize this, and I'm not defending Sam Reed or King County or anyone for their failures. But with the standard you claim, the loser could overturn any very close election. I doubt many courts would agree.

The main reason why the Libertarian would be left off the ballot is because Ruth Bennet clearly did not get enough votes to include her in a run-off contest. Had there been a three way tie, then by all means. But that was not the case. Discluding her now would be proper way to swing a number of those votes to either Gregoire or Rossi so that a definitive result can be achieved.

However, that would have to be based on a primary in which anyone could vote for the candidate of their choice. We did not have such a primary in September. Even if we had the old blanket primary, instead of a party ballot primary, it would not be acceptable to change rules in the middle of an election (i.e. a primary to choose party nominees could not be changed into a top two primary retroactively, even if everyone had be free to vote for any candidate).

However, it might be acceptable to pass a special law to have a runoff between the top two candidates from the November 2004 general election -- assuming, of course, that election is nullfied. Despite any fraud or irregularities, there is no dispute that Gregoire and Rossi were the top two vote getters for that purpose. But again, it is not good to change the rules in the middle of a given election process.

Given that 60% of the people voted for I-872, and an even larger percentage of people (including many of those who preferred partisan primaries) would be unhappy with a Governor elected with less than 49% of the vote -- public opinion would strongly demand a runoff, rather than a repeat of the three candidate November 2004 election.

One fact that cannot be statistically disputed -- while it is uncertain to know whether Rossi or Gregoire really received the most valid votes, it is quite clear that more than 51% of the people who did vote for Governor wanted someone other than whoever (if anyone) ends up winning the November 2004 election.

If the election process has to start over again for some reason, there would definitely have to be an open primary, in which any candidate could run, all voters would get the same ballot, and any voter could vote for any candidate. The top two would then face each other in a run-off. After all, I-872 is the law now.

The Election is over.

Get over it!!!

There is no need for a new election. Under Bush v. Gore and especially the lower Fedreal Court ruling in Roe v. Alabama, the hand recount will be set aside and the machine recount that gave Rossi a 42-vote victory will stand.

See you all at the courthouse!

How would Roe v. Alabama lead to overriding WA law that specifically calls for a manual recount?

Where were all these folks 4 years ago when an election really was stolen in Florida?

Be gracious and move along like a real gentleman would. Do you have it in you?

Bad, bad tie on the news tonight. I thought I'd throw in a fashion tip. You can thank me later.

Mark Smitty

However, I agree that we ought to "consider" having a new election, provided that Dino and company can raise the four million or so needed to conduct such an event.

I have placed your spelling errors in parentheses below. You may say, the state of Washington, or Washington State. I think that a little (edumacation) in election law will serve you well, once you learn to spell, or use spell check.

(surprised) (hypocrisy) (Washington state)

Your letter to Christine Gregoire was disgusting and unmanly. Boy, you had best take another look down your panties, as it appears you don't have a pair.

Is that all that you can do effectively? Moan and cry? We need a Governor, not a crybaby.

Oh dem lidda we-counts didn’t go him widda ways?

Waaaa!

Shut up Dino and quit sniveling!

Milo Madder-Olympia

You are a phony. Concede!