Today's Seattle Times full column lead editorial jumps the gun by giving Governor-pretend Fraudoire's procedural victory the political legitimacy that it does not deserve. Headlined "Gov. Christine Gregoire" and with an exceptionally large photograph, the editorial essentially ingnores the growing controversy over illegal votes and irregularities, the contest that's now in front of a judge and the significant possibility that Mrs. Fraudoire may well be evicted out of the governor's mansion in a matter of weeks. Wouldn't it be more seemly to simply wait until the contest is settled before celebrating the coronation?
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Today's Wall Street Journal editorial page acknowledges that the Washington governorship may well have been stolen [temporary free link for non-subscribers]. Nevertheless, it argues
Still, we have our doubts about the wisdom of a court challenge and a revote, especially if no fraud can be proven.I agree with the findings stated in the editorial (some of which, like reports that "hundreds of voters were registered in storage rental facilities and private mailboxes", were first reported on this blog!). But I disagree with the conclusion that revotes are dangerous. No, an election shouldn't be redone simply because it's close, but should be done when the margin of victory cannot be adequately explained.Consider, first, the problem of moral hazard. There are dozens of extremely close elections in the U.S. at every level of government, elections in which -- like this one -- the "real" outcome can never be known. What should determine which of these merits a revote? The judgment of a court? An opinion poll? Either of these is a recipe not for more perfect democracy, but for the destruction of democracy.
As I wrote in my revote rally speech, elections are about measuring the will of the people before all else. If the margin of irregularities, bureaucratic incompetence and illegal votes exceeds one candidate's margin of victory in any election, then that election should be redone and under improved quality controls. For those of you who are wondering about the consistency of my principles, yes, I was saying the same thing back in November of 2000, when the first reports of irregularities were coming out of Florida...
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 12, 2005 12:02 PM | Email ThisBut this list SHOULD have been compiled and _static_ as far back as October 17 (15 days before the election). http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/register.aspx The only type of change to the list after 15 days prior to the election should be _deletions_ if someone's contested etc.
Committing fraud on _voter registration_ is easier (and less observable) than committing fraud with the actual ballots. The ballots are under a lot of scrutiny - but KC hasn't managed to generate a list of 'Registered Voters' that is complete & accurate YET. That's half (or all) of October, November, December... and still not done. And the only piece that 'needs' fudging is the date-of-registration to allow someone to register after the actual election and still vote.
Posted by: Al on January 12, 2005 12:26 PMWould you concede that today's electorate all across this nation is horrifically polarized?
What makes you so sure that votes will change considerably in that climate?
You seem incredibly focused on King County...is that because they were worse proportionally than the other counties, or is it self serving dismissal of the most Dem leaning county?
Do you have information not shared here that would conclusively show that a new election would result in anything less close than the last election? Remembering all the while that this last election was statewide and would take into consideration all statewide irregularities, not just KC...or do you have evidence that none of the other counties had irregularities?
And what of the touch screen counties...did they have any anomolies? Can they even be verified?
If you have such information, please share it...I'd love to have something concrete to formulate an opinion on...
If not, you find it equitable to burden further an already overtaxed populace on the chance that Rossi will pull away in a decisive victory thereby lending foundation to any administration he would forward?
What if the new outcome is just as close? Do we do it all over again, reworking the state laws yet again to suit the contesting parties whim?
I believe a better use of your new found notoriety would be to champion the cause of election reform...work within the sytem to change it here and across the nation...
It would endure much longer and benefit far more of the citizenry than one illbegotten election...either way...
Posted by: G Davis on January 12, 2005 12:37 PMTo me it seems pretty obvious, and even the Dems reading this blog can't spin away the fact that any vote cast by a voter registered to a storage facility is illegitimate. There is no possible way that a storage facility can be a proper residence. And if someone is illegally living in a storage facility, then the facility should lose it's business license.
"Today is a great day for the people of Washington," Gregoire told a cheering crowd in her 30-minute acceptance speech. "But even more so, today represents a tremendous victory for this state’s Indigent-Felon-Misguided-Democrat citizens, who came to the polls in full force to put one of their own in power."
"I am overwhelmed," Gregoire added. "This is truly unprecedented."
Addressing the largely Indigent-Felon-Misguided-Democrat crowd, Gregoire, who served as Washington's Attorney General from 1992 to 2004, pledged to defend the interests of the state’s sizable Indigent-Felon-Misguided-Democrat community. Among her chief campaign promises was to increase funding for fraudulent activities in King County—an area with a high concentration of Indigent-Felon-Misguided-Democrats.
“I want every Indigent-Felon-Misguided-Democrat to learn from King County Election Board’s state-of-the-art ballot creation. We must leave no vote behind."
As a further measure, Gregoire said she planned to declare November "Ballot Creation Month. It worked with Senator Maria Cantwell and if we focus on ‘ballot creation’ in future close elections, we will win every time. The Senate is ours, the House is ours, the Courts are ours…. How can we lose?”
The Gregoire win, which Democrats are calling the greatest political victory for Indigent-Felon-Misguided-Democrats since previous fraudulent elections, did not come easily. Throughout the long campaign, Gregoire and her supporters tirelessly canvassed newly found ballots, enhanced ballots and illegal ballots, targeting predominantly Indigent-Felon-Misguided-Democrat areas in King County in an effort to capture the highly coveted ‘fraud’ vote. “We will not overlook the contributions of the King County Democratic party political hacks! … They were the key to our success!”
Despite her optimism, Gregoire cautioned that many daunting challenges lie ahead. Her opponent, Dino Rossi, has filed suit in Federal Court to ask for a re-vote.
IT IS NOT OVER YET!!
You ignore the innacurate result of this election and you ignore the possibility of changes to process, that would result in future more accurate results.
What possessed me to do it?!?!?
OMG!! This is so nauseating!!!
Posted by: Raylene on January 12, 2005 12:53 PMI usually find myself in agreement with the POV expressed in the WSJ editiorials, but in this case, I feel they missed a very important point (which they would not have done if they had been following SP as closely as I have!).
The core issue here is not that a revote should occur because the election was close. Or even because some irregularities occurred (which will always be the case). A revote is called for because irregularities occurred that were massive, systemic, and (most importantly) preventable.
Yesterday, Orbusmax had a link to Josef's Blog, where he pointed out that many of the violations that occurred in this election had been brought to KC Elections' attention in 1998. And not a damn thing was done about it. (Why? IMO, because the DemoRAT machine running KC Elections likes it that way - it is much easier to steal elections.....does anybody still think Cantdowell's victory over Gorton was legitimate?)
And, as far as the results go, KC Elections has now formally admitted that there were at least 2100 unverifiable votes cast (1800 voterless ballots plus 346 provisionals fed directly into the vote counting machines at the polls). As CG's margin over DR in KC was ~60 to 40, then for every 100 votes CG got 20 more votes than DR. Thus, assuming that the distribution in these 2100 ballots mirrors the overall distribution (a very charitable assumption, and one that immediately fails if deliberate fraud was involved), the 2100 ballots represent a gain of (2100/100)(20) = 420 votes for CG. Since only 130 votes are required to erase CG's advantage, I believe that 420 is sufficient to overcome any statistical considerations (i.e., 2100 is a large enough sample).
Therefore, no credible argument exists that CG has a legitimate victory, or that the results of the election are knowable, REGARDLESS of how accurately the ballots are counted (accuracy in counting isn't worth a tinker's damn, if the items being counted are contaminated with things that shouldn't be there).
We can only hope that the court reviewing DR's challenge will face the facts.
Posted by: ewaggin on January 12, 2005 01:23 PMConsider the issue of moral hazard.
Moral hazard refers to the tendency for insurance, for example, to change behavior. A person who has full insurance on a vehicle may not drive as carefully as a person who would bear the full financial burden of an accident.
It seems to me in this case that moral hazard cuts the other way. If we tolerate the quality of election we see, we're more likely to see more of the same. That, it seems to me, poses a larger threat to democracy.
Posted by: South County on January 12, 2005 01:27 PMI would hope the same is true with all here...
My question stands...unless there is overriding proof that the *irregularities* STATEWIDE would result in a different outcome, I see nothing in state law that allows disallowing the last election....do you?
We can't change the laws and go back for a redo under new laws...would you be thrilled if the tables were turned and CG tried to pull that?
I've asked over and over again for concrete proof that will stand up in a court of law...
No one is saying there aren't gross flaws in the election process...I've been hollering about that since I got here...but what you all are advocating is contrary to any law in any state in the country...you simply can't can't go backward and revote election under different laws...
If someone can show me something concrete that takes all the irregularities statewide into account and unequivically shows the outcome would be anything different than a very close election, I'd jump on board in a heart beat...
I haven't seen that yet...
Posted by: G Davis on January 12, 2005 01:27 PM"Do you believe this?"
"Can you imagine such corruption. They have stolen the election and very few people [on a national level] have paid attention to it."
Other than comments during the reading of the editorial, he didn't dwell much further on the topic.
Posted by: Mallard T. Drake on January 12, 2005 02:20 PMI'm sure the final results will need to eventually go to the US Supreme Court, just as the Bush v. Gore did. I'm confident the Washington State Supreme Court will ignore state law, just as they have already. The advantage of the Florida Supreme Court desision was that the US Supreme Court was able to agree will a disenting opinion from the Florida Supreme Court. I assume the Washington Supreme Court will unanimously vote against Rossi.
Posted by: Ray J. Tuleya, Oregon on January 12, 2005 02:33 PMenough with the elipses already. If your posts are going to be devoid of intelligence, they might as well be properly formatted.
Posted by: dpmiv on January 12, 2005 02:37 PMRight. Many voters aren't going aren't going to mind if their election officials get away with cheating that benefits their side. But nobody's going to like election officials whose incompetance or corruptness cause elections to get thrown out.
Posted by: supercat on January 12, 2005 03:19 PMWait...you just don't want to see the possibility of Rossi in office for you own twisted progressive reasons that belie logic. You are in the minority - Thank God !
Posted by: KS on January 12, 2005 03:46 PMI agree with this statement Posted by ewaggin at January 12, 2005 01:23 PM --
The core issue here is not that a revote should occur because the election was close. Or even because some irregularities occurred (which will always be the case). A revote is called for because irregularities occurred that were massive, systemic, and (most importantly) preventable.
And, I would add: The circumstances make it appear that the election was close because of illegal voting that benefited Gregoire the Pretender.
The Wall Street Journal op-ed piece really did miss the point. When there is good reason to believe that the outcome of a close election has been affected by illegal voting, contesting the election is sometimes the only way to preserve the democratic underpinnings of a republic.
Posted by: Micajah on January 12, 2005 05:21 PM"I've asked over and over again for concrete proof that will stand up in a court of law..." [Ellipsis points in original]
G Davis
You aren't going to be the person who decides the contested election. You aren't a court, and you aren't the legislature.
What makes you think people are supposed to provide evidence to you?
If you don't think the reports of misconduct and discrepancies are persuasive, that's just fine. State your opinion about them and let it go.
You also stated:
"If someone can show me something concrete that takes all the irregularities statewide into account and unequivically shows the outcome would be anything different than a very close election, I'd jump on board in a heart beat...
"I haven't seen that yet..." [Ellipsis points in original]
Stefan has done quite a bit of work on King County records and has paid some attention to Snohomish County, if I recall correctly.
Is there an anchor chained to your backside that keeps you from investigating some other county?
Don't you think the Democrats are doing what they can to discover what occurred in each county so they can provide that evidence in court?
Stefan and the others who contribute to this blog have no responsibility to do more than they are doing.
If you think the picture is incomplete, fill it in -- but don't complain that others aren't doing it for you.
End of Dutch Uncle lecture.
Posted by: Micajah on January 12, 2005 05:43 PMThis wasn't a well-run election. This was bungled by King County, and it wasn't the first time. Election officials in this state have had sufficient warning that they had a problem, and they took no effective steps. Now we have the worst possible election result - no confidence in the result. If it takes the issue blowing up in their faces and causing the election to be thrown out and re-done before this state will clean up its election process, than so be it.
The most important result of any election isn't who wins, but that the voters believe it was fairly decided. They failed that test, so make them retake it until they pass.
That better?
Yeesh...you folks don't seem to understand that the election *fairness* will be decided on the entire statewide vote and all it's warts...not just KC...that means all the other counties with their foibles that went to Rossi will be taken into consideration too...
It's convient to try to peg it all on KC, but the entire state and ALL the anomolies will be on the table in the courtroom...
I can't get the info that the site owners can and probably already have...it's interesting that they aren't willing to share the entire outlook, don't ya think?
Especially for someone who's trying to supplant the MSM...
Won't happen as long as all that's thrown out is hysterical hyperbole...
Posted by: G Davis on January 12, 2005 08:35 PMSo a 30 vote discrepancy in one county that's 60% Rossi and a 30 vote discrepancy in another that's 60% Gregoire leads to an uncertainty in the real vote of _60_, not of zero.
Posted by: Al on January 12, 2005 09:37 PM