This was sent to us this morning. All edits in brackets:
Dear Sam,This references a conflict of interest that, shock of shocks, has not been covered to any degree by a single local newspaper or TV news station.We know each other well, and have mutually served together and supported each other for many years -- as a result I call upon our relationship to urge you to reconsider the certification planned for [Thursday].
I am disturbed to learn that your use of [the law firm] Perkins Coie in the recent Supreme Court action is a blatant conflict of interest, as that is the firm closely aligned with the Gregoire campaign. In addition, the lawyers involved shilled the Rossi people for information with the intention of earning their trust, and then completely reversed themselves using the information they gained through suspiciously unethical representations.
Sam, I urge you to NOT certify the election tomorrow. The entire election is plagued with discrepancies, inconsistencies, and even perhaps fraud.
As the State's chief elections officer, your responsibility to protect and preserve the integrity of the voting process requires you to delay the certification until all unanswered questions have been examined for their validity.
I am not prone to extremes, yet I have serious and profound concerns regarding the role of your office and the actions you intend to take.
Thank you Sam, I remain your friend and colleague,
Phil Dyer
(Former State Representative, 5th Legislative District)
(Former Mayor, City of Sammamish)
Allegations and speculation, you say? Hey, when has that stopped a journalist from running with a story worth investigating?
Oh... that's right: when it doesn't suit their purposes.
UPDATE: Hon. Phil Dyer writes this morning:
I made an error in reference to the law firm..it was in fact Foster Pepper not Perkins Coie...apologies to the fine folks at Perkins Coie.
Great job !!
it just keeps comong with these people
the dems are totally coming unhinged.
I love it
The Reason the Media is not reporting this, is that there is no story here...
The republicans lost, The Democrats Won.
Get over it
Move On.
Posted by: Magnum Serpentine on December 30, 2004 09:40 AMIf there's no story, why do you keep trolling? What are you worried about?
Aren't you from Tennesee anyway? The home state of Al Gore, which he didn't win in 2000, thereby costing him the election?
We're winning.
Posted by: Larry on December 30, 2004 09:45 AMThere is no such thing as an investigative reporter.
All of today's reporters working for the mainstream media are mindless droids, programmed to regurgitate the party line. Ocassionally, some objectivity is allowed on the editorial pages, but you will never see a balanced, objective, investigative piece on the front page, or as the lead story on the TV news.
The kind of people that are capable of such independent thought, stopped being hired by the media outlets long ago.
Read Hugh Hewitt here for more info.
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 30, 2004 09:49 AMThe first step to cleaning up State politics is to clean up the Republican leadership.
Posted by: Lew on December 30, 2004 09:54 AMLike, for example, Sam Reed?
Posted by: Larry on December 30, 2004 10:01 AMHow is he asking for something outside of the law? He's asking for the legislature to call for a revote. The Legislature has that power.
Do you also believe if he were to contest the election, get the election thrown out by a judge and then have the Legislature call for a revote that that is "outside the law"?
Posted by: Scott on December 30, 2004 10:10 AMI agree with you. You meant to address 'Lincoln Republican'. But thanks for doing so - it required a response.
Posted by: Larry on December 30, 2004 10:17 AMAfter three vote tallies and 58 days of waiting, Democrat Christine Gregoire was declared Washington's governor-elect on Thursday.Posted by: DustinJames on December 30, 2004 10:31 AM
So let's drop the Phil Dyer letter, and stop pursuing this nonexistent conflict of interes. It is harmful to our cause, by deflecting attention away from the true problems in this election, and making us look like dumbkopfs.
Posted by: Richard Pope on December 30, 2004 10:37 AMLawyers suck, and sad to say, I work for them.
Posted by: Ferrous on December 30, 2004 10:46 AMAs someone who has worked in the field, I can tell you that the largest law firms are not always the best, nor to they necessarily have the best lawyers. Sometimes the sharpest legal minds have their own solo practices or are in "niche" firms with only a few partners.
Posted by: Mark on December 30, 2004 11:00 AMDino must get his lawyers into Federal Court and sue. Today is the first day he can do that, since he couldn't do it until the so-called
"election" was "certified."
Let's rush that $35 million over in the form of Marlboro's and Camels!
Posted by: DustinJames on December 30, 2004 11:12 AMAnd eveyone else, want to find/ email you WA legislators?
Do it by clicking here
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 30, 2004 11:39 AMKeep up the good work
Tucker
JEFFERSON COUNTY RECONILES TOTALS FROM THE VOTER REGISTRATION LIST WITH THE TOTAL # OF BALLOTS COUNTED BY PRECINDT BEFORE, I SAID BEFORE, THEY EVER CERTIFY AN ELECTION. THEY DID SO THIS TIME FOR ALL 3 COUNTS. BEFORE THE ORIGINAL COUNT WAS CERTIFIED, THE FOUND 1 PRECINDT WHERE 5 MORE VOTERS WERE GIVEN CREDIT FOR VOTING THAN BALLOTS COUNTED. SINCE THEY PHYSICALLY SEPERATE BALLOTS BY PRECINDT, IT WAS EASY TO RE-RUN THAT PRECINDT. THEY DID SO AND THE SCANNER PICKED UP THE 5 BALLOTS. APPARENTLY THEY MUST HAVE STUCK TOGETHER THE FIRST TIME. ANYWAY, THE VOTER REG. LIST TOTAL WAS EXACTLY RECONCILED TO THE TOTAL BALLOTS COUNTED AND THEN THE ELECTION WAS CERTIFIED. THIS PROCESS WAS DONE AT EACH RECOUNT.
These experienced election officials are astounded that King County is off by over 3,000 ballots after 3 counts. Reconciling voter registration list totals to ballots counted is a fundamental internal control step in the preocess BEFORE certifying. Apparently other counties failed to reconcile before certifying too.
The lack of internal control policies and/or mismanagement of policies is appalling in King County. And keep in mind these lists have been "updated" as Goldy put's it, since the actual count and certifications.
Mr. Logan talks a good game. So does Sam Reed. Could the bureaucrats be "circling the wagons" to try to mask incompetence?? Time wil tell.
Posted by: Mr. Cynical on December 30, 2004 11:52 AMI'm far more cynical than you are, Mr. Cynical.
Posted by: Julie on December 30, 2004 11:58 AMNow that's how you hold an honest election. Dean Logan, King County, and all the Democrats of this state that still naively believe that the election was fair can learn a thing or two from you. And repugnant Democrats such as Goldy that get a laugh out of serious counting and make a mockery of the process could learn a thing or two as well.
Decent people like you would like to take back our state, but dishonest Dems are doing everything they can to keep this from happening, with the help of apathetic leaders like Sam Reed.
If nothing else, this will be the last time. Look for WA to swing Republican in the future, good people can only take so much before they revolt.
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 30, 2004 12:05 PMYou are exactly right! Rossie must go to court, now.
Remember, the Legislature is controlled by Democrats. The Attorney General is a Democrat. The State judges are almost all
Democrats. The staff of the Times and the Intelligent-as-a-Post are all Democrats.
Never try to reason with the enemy. Dino should go to Federal court now.
Posted by: FedUpWithThis on December 30, 2004 12:35 PM(Sorry to any of the good and decent lawyers reading this. I know that YOU are out there, too.)
Posted by: Michele on December 30, 2004 01:02 PMIs this a code word for "Neo-cons"?
Posted by: steve miller on December 30, 2004 01:02 PMThe loony liberals pick up whatever words they see on leftist sites on the internet--like an STD. Not one of them can distinguish between a conservative and a neo-conservative (not that there is any difference) nor tell you where these terms originally came from.
Posted by: FedUpWithThis on December 30, 2004 01:38 PMI'll be writing letter to anyone who will listen.
Posted by: Larry in Renton on December 30, 2004 02:47 PMHOUSE INTERNET E-MAIL DELIVERY SERVICE
TO: Representative Geoff Simpson
SUBJECT: Governors race
MESSAGE:
I am very disturbed by the many irregularities that have tossed our governors election around almost as badly as the Asian tsunami's. Washingtonians have a right clean elections and legitimately won political offices. As it stands now, we have neither.
I urge you to vote against the official certification for governor and to call on your fellow legislators to demand a new vote on, and for, the behalf of the Washington taxpayers.
I realize this will cost the taxpayers a significant amount of money,but what price can there be on liberty? on truth? on legitimacy? I say they are all priceless and I, for one, am willing to bear the burden.
Thank you
***
Thank you for your message. I've been following the election very closely. Having been through a machine recount and a selective partial hand recount (requested and paid for by the Republican party) in my 2000 election against Phil Fortunato, the results of the 2004 Washington gubernatorial race have been quite interesting to me.
In 2000, when I ran against then incumbent GOP Representative Fortunato, the final election results had me winning the race by 144 votes out of more than 44,000 votes cast. State law called for a mandatory machine recount because the margin of my victory was less than 1/2 of 1% of the total votes cast. After the machine recount was completed, I was still leading by 133 votes. At the time, control of the Washington State House of Representatives was at stake. If I won the race, the House would be tied with 49 Republicans and 49 Democrats. If I lost, the Republicans would have a 50-48 advantage.
Rather than asking for and paying for a complete hand recount as they were entitled to by the law, the House Republican Organizing Committee chose to ask for and pay for a hand recount only in those precincts where Fortunato performed exceptionally well. Again, this was permitted by our state laws and nobody, including yours truly, objected. Why? Because the election and recount was conducted in accordance with our state's laws. During both recounts, there were ballots that were called into question by partisan observers. Typically it was because the machine had registered an undervote (somebody had skipped my race and continued voting down the ballot) and it was left to human interpretation to discern voter intent. Sometimes the votes went to me and others went to my opponent, but in nearly every case, voter intent was clear but the machines were too "dumb" to figure it out. Either the bubble wasn't completely filled in, or the voter used the wrong color pen or they used a checkmark or "X" instead of coloring in the oval. In some cases, they filled in the "write-in" oval and wrote either my name or Phil Fortunato's on the line provided. Occasionally, ballots were not counted for either candidate because the voter had forgotten to fill-in either oval, or they filled them both in. There were several write-in votes. In every case, both political parties agreed with the interpretation of the ballots.
Machine voting was never intended to replace the intelligence of humans, only to speed the process when the voters clearly favored on candidate or measure over another. That's why we have provisions in the law that allow for hand recounts.
In the end, I had won the election by 135 votes.
In this year's race for Governor, there were mistakes made by King County and many other counties. That's an unfortunate but all-too common component of elections not only in our state, but all across our country and in democracies around the world. There are also provisions contained in our laws that deal with election fraud. Specifically, if an elections
officer is guilty of illegally certifying an election, they have committed a felony. It's important to distinguish between fraud and mistakes. Fraud occurs when someone intentionally manipulates an election to achieve a certain outcome. Mistakes are an every day part of our lives that we can recover from. When we recover from our mistakes in regard to an election, we have revealed the true intent of the
electorate.
In this case, it appears as though the intent of the electorate was to elect Chris Gregiore as our governor. If there is evidence of fraud or
malfeasance, I hope it will be brought forward and the perpetrators punished to the full extent of the law. So far there has been a lot of heated rhetoric from both sides, but I haven't heard of a serious accusation that fraud or malfeasance has occurred. And our election laws
worked exactly as they were designed to. Where uncertainty about the law exists, our judicial system is brought into play to interpret the laws
and to make sure they are applied fairly. I believe the Washington Supreme Court ruled correctly in both cases they have heard during this election and recount. Even though one ruling went in the favor of the GOP and one went in favor of the Democrats, ultimately the citizens of Washington are the winners when our system works correctly.
As an interested observer, I have seen nothing to indicate that anyone stole the election and there are no provisions in state law that allow for a re-vote simply because some people do not like the results of an election. Please feel free to contact me anytime you have a question or comment. Thanks again.
Sincerely, Geoff
***
Thank you for your quick reply. While we understand that you agree with the election results, especially in light of your own victory as you outlined below, we do NOT believe you are following the will of the voters in Washington. In an admittedly unscientific poll conducted by KIRO nearly 62% of respondants called for a revote. In another poll conducted by KING5, nearly 57% said Rossi should not concede. Given the questions surrounding this election and particularly the heinous omission of the military votes, given that Gregoire did not garner even the votes that Murray did and that many Kerry/Murray voters indeed did not place their confidence in her, given that this state is so divided, the only way to put this behind us definitively is with a new election. As taxpayers, both responsible for your salary and for the burden of a new election cost, we urge you to push it forward with your fellow legislators.
Perhaps the Republicans should offer to pay half of the cost of a re-vote and challenge the Democrats to come up with the other half.
Posted by: bob the builder on December 30, 2004 04:25 PMAnd what you don't get is that the republican party lost.
now please... Get over it and move on.
(This is my last post for the evening.)
Posted by: Magnum Serpentine on December 31, 2004 12:40 AM(This is my last post for the evening.)
Promise?
Posted by: South County on December 31, 2004 08:37 AM