Been spending more time analyzing the newly posted precinct canvass of the King County manual recount, and the differences with the canvass of the machine recount.
The story seems to be that at every opportunity where new ballots were somehow introduced into the mix, Gregoire benefited disproportionately.
As mentioned in an earlier post, 266 ballots seemed to disappear, while 325 magically materialized. Again, these are not just a matter of reinterpration of marks on paper, these are entire sheets of paper that either vanished or appeared out of thin air. Christine Gregoire added a net 47 new votes to her total, Dino Rossi lost a net 12 from his.
Dig deeper.
There were 238 precincts that found new ballots, 291 precincts that lost ballots, and 2087 precincts where the ballot count didn't change from the machine count.
In the precincts where the ballot count didn't change, new votes were added to/subtracted from the candidates counts by reinterpreting the undervotes and overvotes. In these precincts, Rossi gained +23 and lost -27; Gregoire gained +47 and lost -36. (1 was a Rossi that flipped to Gregoire) Out of the under/over-votes reawarded to a candidate, Gregoire won 68%, significantly more than her 59% share of the vote in King County overall. Of the candidate votes that were reinterpreted to be under/overvotes, Gregoire lost only 58%, slightly less than her share of the vote.
In the precincts that discovered new ballots, but didn't change the number of under/overvotes, Gregoire won 131 (69%) of the 200 newly added ballots. In the precincts where ballots vanished, but the number of under/overvotes did not change, Gregoire lost 108 (58%) of the disappeared ballots.
When ballots disappeared, they disappeared proportionally from both candidates. When ballots appeared, they appeared disproportionally for Gregoire.
Oddly enough!
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 31, 2004 12:18 PM | Email ThisI hope you take the panicked denunciations that Democrat trolls will soon post as a sign that you are rattling their fragile cage.
Posted by: Khalid on December 31, 2004 12:37 PMThe Democrats keep dismissing everything as "having a perfectly logical explanations." It takes time to find out where to pull to unravel this whole mess. But it will happen. There's far to many wildy unlikely connections that Shark keeps finding. Either a) this is truly an amazingly freakish statistical event, or b) there is something very stinky at King County elections.
That's why this is going to go to a revote. Noone comes even close to trusting the outcome of this election. Even Goldy knows that it is way to close to call, and he stands by what he said weeks ago.
Democrats are smug in the law that ends the election after the third recount, which has always been "good enough." But this time around, we have the Internet/ Blogs, and the race was so close that the public is not going to let this go without real scrutiny.
There will be millions of signatures on the petitions, millions of orange ribbons, thousands of people in Olympia, and all of it is going to add up to exposure that the Democrats can't dismiss.
Buckle up Goldy, you are in for a ride.
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 31, 2004 12:41 PMStefan, may God richly bless you.
Posted by: Julie on December 31, 2004 12:49 PMI totally agree. Stefan, you are a champ. Thanks.
For me it is no longer about who wins either. Sure I'd like to see Rossi. But I'd honestly be happy to see Gregoire in office IF she wins after an honest revote.
The sham of this election though is something that we cannot tolerate and must fight to reenact until it happens.
There was a crooked woman,
And she wore a crooked smile.
She had a crooked concience,
Besides the crooked smile;
She stole a crooked vote,
Which was her crooked fate,
And so became the leader,
Of a very crooked state.
http://pws.prserv.net/usinet.krswan/nyet.gif
Posted by: Dave M on December 31, 2004 01:42 PMThis is not a King County election, it is a Washington state (39 counties) election. Way to go Shark!
Posted by: GS on December 31, 2004 01:53 PMIf it does, how did you net out the 566 new ballots to come up with your figures?
Posted by: Richard Pope on December 31, 2004 02:15 PMThe 566 are in the canvass file separated from the precinct counts on a distinct row.
The analysis above does not include the 566
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on December 31, 2004 02:21 PMGregoire won, the election is over. Another one comes up every 2 years. You're all totally tiresome.
It's New Year's Eve. Enjoy the parties, have a Happy New Year and, above all, get a life!
Posted by: Nelson on December 31, 2004 02:28 PMI don't think they could legally break down the actual votes from the 566 new identified ballots, since that would reveal how individual voters cast their vote. So this has to be kept in the aggregate.
Of course, the identities of the 566 voters whose newly identified ballots were approved -- that should be a public record.
I assume that (1) you have the ability to identify those 566 people from your database and (2) the count of 895,660 identified actual voters includes (all of) those 566 people?
And this has come up time and again sice Florida--Democrats DO NOT UNDERSTAND/CANNOT FOLLOW clear and easy instructions on how to vote.
This simply demonstrates their ignorance once again.
Posted by: Grey on December 31, 2004 03:16 PMIt's New Year's Eve. Enjoy the parties, have a Happy New Year and, above all, get a life!
Nobody's forcing you to stay and be bored.
Posted by: South County on December 31, 2004 03:42 PMThe election was a Thursday, Dec. 30 story. Today is Dec. 31, tomorrow is Sat., Jan. 1, the next day is Sun., Jan. 2, and the following day is Mon., Jan. 3.
Between yesterday and Monday, all of the news will be focused on the tsunami in Asia and football games. Nobody will give a rap about "yesterday's story," which was the election, except for you 3 or 4 GOPhanatics.
Face it, you're history -- Dino Rossi is now yesterday's news. Nobody cares anymore.
Oh, and by the way, don't even think about a re-vote. Look what happened in the Ukraine. The right wing guy, similar to Rossi, got slaughtered.
Rossi knows that he'd lose in a landslide in a re-vote, so he's ready to concede and live with having run a great, super-close race, and think about future election opportunities. If he were to run again now, he'd face a total disaster and never, ever, again be able to run for anything.
1. GOP lawyers getting ready to file lawsuits contesting the election.
2. PR people getting demonstrations organized. These things are NOT spontaneous, in spite of what you may have heard. It takes lots of work and coordination and communication.
3. GOP operatives constantly calling and faxing news organizations Seattle PI, Seattle Times, radio and tv stations, AP offices with 4 to 6 talking points: missing ballots, missing voters, the legal violations Stefan and others have identified, etc.
4. When news about federal or state investigations of irregularities breaks, or when other big news breaks, these GOP operatives should get back on the phones and fax machines AGAIN and make their points to the reporters and editors.
It's not rocket science, but it takes work to get the points to be made into a format understandable by busy reporters and editors on deadline and not particularly inclined to see the points.
Posted by: Mac on December 31, 2004 07:40 PM"Gregoire's spokesman Morton Brilliant said Republicans were acting like children watching a batch of cookies baking, reaching in too early, then complaining that they're still gooey."
I'll let you decide which phrase makes the most sense.