Here at Sound Politics we do our best to engage with our critics who attempt to challenge us with actual facts.
Two of my favorite critics, a couple of anonymous bloggers from Portland, OR who call themselves "Carla" and "Torrid Joe" recently released a two-part series entitled "Fisking Sharkansky", where they attempt to take me down for "serial conclusion-jumping and lackluster fact checking" among other assorted allegations.
In part (1) of the fisking, they disparage my credibility in vague terms, with only two factual assertions, as far as I can tell, that would prove me wrong.
(1)
There are over 2600 individual precincts in King County. Most polling places serve multiple precincts. Cast your ballot at the wrong table and you'll be misfiled.Well yes, and that's exactly why the analysis they're challenging, but not linking to explains that I do, in fact, roll up precincts by polling place, see item (6). [and a friendly hint: if you want to be a credible fisker, you also have to link to what you're fisking]
(2)
King's discrepancy [is not] out of order with their previously reported discrepancy in 2000. Neither is it the highest error rate in the state; currently it would appear Spokane holds that honor.By now 3 people who were closely involved in the 2000 election in King County have publicly stated that the discrepancy was about 20, approximately 1/90th of the 2004 discrepancy.
The issue of Spokane County brings us to the original version of "Fisking Sharkansky Part Deux", which was posted on Friday, February 11
Notice Spokane County. Rossi won this county easily. Total voters are fewer than one fourth of King County’s. But they have twice as many errors as King per voter. Moreover, their discrepancy represents more voters than ballots, a condition which Sharkansky claimed lacked plausibility as a type of honest error. However Spokane is apparently a Republican leaning county—is it therefore not worth mentioning? Are their errors not so egregious?The claim was that Spokane County identified 976 more voters than ballots. Their theory that a Democrat Auditor who loses 976 ballots in a Republican-leaning county somehow diminishes Rossi's case is ludicrous. But unfortunately (for Rossi's case), the claim is not true. Net of "courtesy credits" (for voters who submitted a flawed ballot that wasn't counted), Spokane's discrepancy is only 77 more ballots than voters, or roughly 0.04%, far less than King County's discrepancy of 0.21%, which is still by far the highest discrepancy of any county in the state that I'm currently aware of. To Torrid Joe's credit, he issued a correction, coincidentally just before I was about to post this piece. [I spoke with Mike McLaughlin at the Spokane County auditor's office and confirmed the numbers yesterday afternoon]. Their spreadsheet with the numbers is still incorrect, and also makes a similar mistake for Yakima County, showing 15 more voters than ballots. I also contacted Yakima's Auditor yesterday and was told that net of courtesy credits they actually counted 15 more ballots than identified voters.
Thanks for fisking me, "Carla" and "Torrid Joe", and please fisk me again soon. I'm flattered that you think I'm interesting enough to fisk. I'll be even more flattered when you do a better job of finding (my) errors and "lackluster fact-checking". All I ask that you link to my original posts so your readers can read for themselves what you're fisking.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 15, 2005 02:38 PM | Email ThisSay, I wonder if 'Carla' and 'Torrid Joe' are 2 that we can add to the list of illegal voters?...ones who live in Oregon but vote across the river, absentee, by using a friend or relative's address?? There are those, you know!
They seem mighty interested in our election.
I follow Sound Politics everday(almost)and I live in Colorado, I did not vote in your election but the entire country is following this.
I think that Stefan did a good job of replying to the 2 and his choice of a polite response was refreshing and yet another reason to keep this blog has a daily read.
Thanks for the rebuttal.
shark, you are on another plane as the rest of us and please stay ahead of us.
Oh yeah, and he will omit any link to this post, instead linking to the prior post from Shark and both of TorridJoe's posts.
Posted by: Rex on February 15, 2005 04:06 PMYou hit the nail on the head I've been on an local liberal blog (not going to say the name don't want him to have advertising) and he seems to post alot of accusations and backs them up with links to obscure or amateur bloggers sites. I told them that's like asking the local photo lab about brain surgery, but I guess all you have to do is hope that the info is correct for long enough then it becomes fact.
Posted by: Adriel on February 15, 2005 04:22 PMWho are carla and torridjoe??? They are so, so sloppy...I'll bet they are government workers!!
Posted by: Mr. Cynical on February 15, 2005 04:34 PMTJ and Carla did a creditable job, though the result was like getting an "A" in Citizenship, but an "F" for the Class in grade school...
Kudos, Stefan, for your dedication...
Posted by: marks on February 15, 2005 04:46 PMBut, SOS Sam Reed felt a need to respond to us today!
Posted by: DeadManVoting (aka Iguana) on February 15, 2005 05:09 PMWe need better rules yes, but more importantly we need individuals of integrity to uphold them. Mr Reed clearly is unsuitable.
Posted by: Chuck Miller on February 15, 2005 06:00 PMIt's amazing how much these people rely on spin. I'll bet Goldy can convince himself that it is sunny on the most dreary and rainy April day in the Northwest.
Hopefully Stefan's excellent rebuttal will shut down TorridJoe and Carla so we don't have to read their same tired attempts at arguments over and over in the comments here.
Great work Stefan!
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 15, 2005 09:12 PM"We have discovered in this exercise the folly of an overly serious look at the ballot/voter variances. To do so is to admit that they are legally or administratively relevant."
And why shouldn't ballot/voter variances be "legally or administratively relevant"?
Apparently we are supposed to simply accept such errors as inevitable. They try to argue the case that the errors in King County are directly attributable to having to process a larger number of votes than other counties. Yet it seems obvious that - with proper controls in place - it should be no more difficult to reconcile voters and ballots at a precinct in King County as at a precinct anywhere else in the State. The errors are introduced at the precinct/polling place, not the Elections office after the polls close. It is no different than requiring that every cash register in a store (or teller window in a bank) reconcile its till, and resolve any discrepency before it is deposited with the others.
Why is this so unreasonable to expect of our election process?
Posted by: Patrick on February 15, 2005 09:45 PMFirst, I too am in Oregon. The Washington election is of interest to many Oregonians because, while Seattle-area people might not be so aware of it, there is alot of interstate activity. You will find that Washingtonians living near the Oregon border take a similar interest in Oregon's elections. Many of us have business interests and real property in both states, and we feel like we have a stake in the outcome of elections in both states.
Second, I wouldn't be taking too much advice from Oregonians on how to run an election. Multnomah County is every bit as corrupt as King County, if not more so. The difference in Oregon is that the thieves know how to steal the elections so that the outcomes don't appear to be close. As a result the process never gets the badly needed proctology exam as has been done in Washington generally and in King County specifically since November 2. While it's only when it's close that people examine it closely, just because it doesn't seem to be so close doesn't mean that there isn't massive fraud going on. Oregon's vote-by-mail election law scheme opens the door to that massive fraud by throwing away all the historical safeguards that were put in place to protect the integrity of elections. And in Oregon the extreme left wing of the Democrat party holds all state-wide offices, and runs Multnomah County, a county that is as important to the outcome of elections in Oregon as King County is in Washington.
Third, I do not accept TJ and Carla's naked assertion that "[I]n our opinion, the rejection of valid votes is always worse than the acceptance of invalid votes, unless the result of official fraud." I'd say both are bad, and to make comparisons about the relative worth of one as opposed to the other is sophistry at best, and something a lot more dishonest than that at worst.
Posted by: Jay Bird on February 15, 2005 11:07 PMGrats to you for answering some of their concerns.
However, looking at the criticisms they made, you apparently were posting all kinds of accusations that you never checked out beforehand:
The most visible mistake was asking the postal service about bulk mailing of military overseas ballots, and not asking about the right bulk mail license. With a minimum of fact checking, Carla was able to suss that one out and defuse the allegations.
I don't see it addressed today in your post. Do you agree with their criticism of you on this topic? Did you ever correct your error?
Posted by: Erik on February 16, 2005 12:09 AMErik, where is Carla's proof? A private mailing firm is not the post office. WHy would someone use a mailing service? How about lack of accountability Would time and date stamps have anything to do with it?
Posted by: bigRob on February 16, 2005 04:52 AMThe difference between Stefan and TJ/myself is that when we make an error, we correct it. We do so upfront and we do so as soon as we possibly can. We don't drag our feet and we don't pretend it didn't happen.
There is an odious lack of honesty permeating from this blog. It continues to go on in an arrogant and nasty way. But do continue. It merely serves to hurt your cause which is most obviously to do anything by any means to get Rossi installed as governor...rather than election form or finding the truth.
Carla@PreemptiveKarma
Posted by: carla on February 16, 2005 07:48 AMBecause it doesn't help the Democrats win. When a Democratic machine runs a state, the purpose of the electoral process is to elect Democrats (and the occasional token Republican). This would apply also to Republican machines, but there are few of them and they are inept (trying to organize a Republican Machine is like trying to herd cats, just too (expletive deleted) independant. Democrats, alas, tend to be entirely sheep-like.
alaric
Posted by: alaric on February 16, 2005 08:19 AMI'm sure you're properly exercised about Democrat misdeeds in Milwaukee, but your comment-blathering all over Sound Politics is a lot more like ballot-stuffing than about contributing to a discussion west of the Mississippi. You some kind of spam artist?
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on February 16, 2005 08:30 AMI encourage Carla and TJ to remain active on this blog. A healthy debate is needed to bring reform, not only to Washington State, but across the entire land. You can't have a debate with only pro-repub comments and participants. It's possible that at some point in time, Carla and TJ will come to realize that voter fraud is largely a Demo method. Even more important, the rest of us will realize how damaging vote fraud is to the entire process, and will all do what we can to prevent it in the future.
BTW, I believe the process in Spokane went quite smoothly. I know two people who were observers at precincts in the hand recount, and my biggest question was "enhancing votes". The two people who were there both stated that the ballots set aside where there wasn't a clear choice were only "enhanced" if there was clearly a mark in one box or another that just (for whatever reason) wasn't picked up by the scanners.
Posted by: Spokane Repub on February 16, 2005 08:51 AMPer her and Erik's inquiry - I do remember that Stefan posted a correction about the mailing of military ballots overseas, and then posted an update saying the situation was not fully vetted and remained open. If Erik actually read this blog and didn't just log on to post his always-obtuse comments, maybe he would remember this.
But I see phrases in Carla's post: "typical lack of grace and character", "odious lack of honesty permeating ", "arrogant and nasty". I see nothing of the sort in Stefan's post. This type of elementary-school playground name-calling is typical of those who do not have any verifiable facts or arguments and wish to immaturely discredit another. It's not even an ad hominem attack, it's more like a you smellinum attack.
Kudos to you Stefan, for taking your fisking like a real blogger and responding without invective. Carla's name calling only serves to discredit herself. At least torridjoe stayed above that type of fray.
Posted by: Larry on February 16, 2005 09:40 AMAnyway, I'm curious how carla and torridjoe pay their bills in Portland. Portland is a very expensive city. Are you both trust-funders?
Do you have real jobs? If so, where? With your number-crunching talents, you both must work somewhere.
I am trying to wean myself off blogging.
Plus, with Carla and TJ on the job slaying conspiracy theories left and right, I am not sure there's much left to do.
The military has a pretty extensive procedures to make sure servicemembers can vote. Would have been nice if they were given even a cursory look before an entire genre of disenfranchisement accusations were posted.
A private mailing firm is not the post office.
Yes. Agreed.
Why would someone use a mailing service?
Unpatriotic isn't it. I understand it's done.
And when you say, "I also see flawed and discredited studies being cited as factual--especially in reference to education," you give readers your conclusion without any way to fact-check. Is this a good way to convince people, or just spout ideological conclusions as if they were self-evident?
And your last bit, "The right is a noise machine to fool the credulous into backing policies and politicians who are not really on their side," surely seems like a re-wording of Karl Marx's famous statement about religion being the opiate of the masses. If you change the word "right" to "left," it becomes apparent that the statement is equally valid, and thus your quote seems to be made from ideology rather than a reasoned, logical conclusion.
Stefan, your reply was very professional! Well done.
The last blog post you made regarding the military ballots was that--in effect--the log of when the military ballots were sent out was insufficient proof that they were actually sent out that day. And you had not been provided any other evidence that this actually occurred.
I agree that this is not proof. It is an assertion made by King County which should be provable or disprovable. Has there been any progress determining the validity of King County's assertion?
Posted by: iconoclast on February 16, 2005 01:00 PMThe problem is the complete lack of understanding of what it's like to be deployed, especially in a combat zone. As many soldiers stationed in Iraq will tell you, yes, you can vote by Internet or Fax from Iraq - getting ACCESS to the technology to do so is ANOTHER matter.
However, many soldiers don't even realize there are other voting methods. Their entire training is about staying alive. Very few MINUTES are spent going over how to vote in a combat zone.
I would suggest Erik actually TALK to deployed combat military personal rather than simply believe that just because alternative voting methods EXIST that they are VIABLE.
I'd like to thank Lt. Brian Suits for pointing that out on KVI weeks ago.
Posted by: Dave P. on February 16, 2005 01:08 PMI have kept up with this blog and the events surrounding it from Florida and would say I am about 65% up on it and Stefan's posts and nowhere do I recall seeing unprofessional or behavior that would give the Republicans a bad name in Washington or anywhere else.
What I do see though, is people like Carla using the old playbook of the left to distort, distract, deceive, destroy and decimate ANYONE they do not happen to agree with and rely on feelings, conjecture and much less than factual information much of the time. The old, "if we repeat it enough it will become fact play".
If this does stand it will only hurt the Democrats BUT as we now know they are too blinded by hate and rage from being out of power. If CG stays then look for good things to domino for 2006, 2008 and beyond in the Republican camp as America is on to the game and much smarter now thanks to blogs like these and the decline on the propagandizing MSM.
REVOTE.
Posted by: niceville on February 16, 2005 02:57 PMPeople are tired of the negative and the lack of facts in our politics. They are turning more and more to the political party which satisfies their inherent need for positive results, peace, security, and civil rights.
By the way, Republicans on the first count, they were formed to give slaves their freedom and give them the right to vote. Democrats were the second set, they laid claim to what the Republicans achieved although they started as disenfranchised southerners who moved to the north after the civil war. People are turning to the Republican party because they finally are realizing how much they are being lied to, misled, and manipulated. You really should do better investigation. Try looking up Michigan history on how the Democratic party started adn then look up each topic I mentioned including the support for the wars and dictators.
Posted by: MARK BEYER on February 16, 2005 06:52 PMHmm. Well that might be overstated a bit.
However, the real issue here is whether Stephan wants to be considered as anything more than a partison ranter.
Do the facts have any relevance to the posts he is making or is it mere red meat to rile up the revote crowd?
One doesn't need to be a scholar to make a blog post. However, one expects some level of competence and fact checking beforehand. Making some unsupported assertion and then backing away from it days later doesn't cut it. Even for a blog.
The initial post here were the theme of the revote crowd which employed the mantra that "votes for felons counted while votes by military members didn't." This was gleefully replayed in the media over and over again and even on the billboard on I-5 near Fife.
Carla completely lays waste to the baseless assertion of military disenfranchisement:
Lt. Colonel Boylan informed me that if a service person serving outside the United States didn't recieve a ballot on time from the place where they're registered, they can still vote. In that case, they may use a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot. Lt. Colonel Boylan also informed me that those ballots were in ample supply. State and local races can be voted using those ballots as well. Those ballots are also available online.
Lt. Col. Boylan also told me some other interesting facts. Beginning in what he believed was "early Summer", the US military conducted a major voter education drive.
I don't see how it is too much to ask to investigate the matter a little beforehand.
Per the King County fact sheet (http://www.metrokc.gov/elections/news/2005_01_05.htm), 15,829 ballots were issued to military and overseas voters, with 12,694 received back and 12,474 counted. In addition, 1,342 Federal Write-in ballots were received with only 1,081 actually validated and counted ( I wonder what was wrong with the other 261?). Per the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) web site, these Federal Write-in ballots can only be used by military personnel that previously registered to vote absentee and had not received their regular absentee ballot in time.
The fact that they received so many of these Federal Write-in ballot seems to indicate that a fairly high percentage of military voters in King county did not get their absentee ballots in time.
In addition, the FVAP web site indicates that these ballots can only be used to vote for Federal offices unless modified by the individual states to allow the ballot to be used to vote for state and local positions. While several states have such modifying language, Washington is not one of them. There is a bill currently before the legislature would authorize the use of the Federal Write-in ballot for future state and local elections (HB 1604).
Your assertion (via Carla) that these ballots could have been used to vote for state and local races is not correct per the current law, and even the King County fact sheet says that these ballots are to "allow service members the opportunity to cast a ballot for federal offices". It's possible that some of the 1,342 Federal Write-in ballots did contain votes for state and local races, but it is not clear that King county would have counted any of them. The SOS office says that write in votes on these ballots for state and local positions should be counted, but can't point to any law allowing it (perhaps that is why the law is being changed). With all this confusion, it would be nice to know how many of the 1,342 Federal Write-in ballots had votes for governor, and of those, how many did King County count?
Posted by: MCL on February 16, 2005 10:43 PMI think that has been a moving target, but the fact sheet states:
King County Elections began mailing oversea and military ballots for the General Election on Oct.1, 2004. These were from an absentee category referred to as “submarine” or “special absentee ballots” for voters who may not be able to receive a regular absentee ballot within the timeframe necessary to participate in the election.
The bulk of the military and overseas ballots were mailed on Oct.7, 2004, with some mailings in between these two dates and subsequent mailings as further requests were received.
Number of military/overseas ballots issued on that date:
On Oct.1, 246 ballots were issued
On Oct.7, 3055 ballots were issued
For the Oct.7 mailing, King County prioritized our mail-out to ensure military and overseas ballots were mailed as soon as they were available and within the timeframes required by state law and guidelines from the United State Department of Justice.
I think the final position on this was that the last remaining ballots going to overseas military personnel were delivered to PSI group in Kent (www.psigroupinc.com) on October 8th. As far as I know, nobody has ever followed up to find out when the ballots actually made it to the post office.
Posted by: MCL on February 16, 2005 11:03 PMI believe that the remainder of the ballots were sent to military personnel located within the states, so there was not as much urgency in getting them out. I can't prove all of the remaining ballots were sent within the US, but King County says that all of the overseas ballots were sent by the 8th. This was still way later than what the military had wanted (they wanted ballots out a minimum of 45 days before the election for overseas personnel).
Posted by: MCL on February 16, 2005 11:28 PMI've spoken with King, Kitsap, Pierce, Chelan, Yakima (and a few others) about the federal military ballots. Each county told me that if local races were written in on the ballots, if the person was duly registered to vote for those items...the votes were counted. In fact Kitsap and Snohomish both had their voter pamphlets available online in case there was confusion as to what one could vote for.
Posted by: carla on February 17, 2005 03:00 PMTo quote MCL:
"In addition, the FVAP web site indicates that these ballots can only be used to vote for Federal offices unless modified by the individual states to allow the ballot to be used to vote for state and local positions. While several states have such modifying language, Washington is not one of them. There is a bill currently before the legislature would authorize the use of the Federal Write-in ballot for future state and local elections (HB 1604).
Your assertion (via Carla) that these ballots could have been used to vote for state and local races is not correct per the current law, and even the King County fact sheet says that these ballots are to "allow service members the opportunity to cast a ballot for federal offices".
Now back to my earlier question under this topic, anyone check the ballot addresses sent overseas before 8 October? If the addresses have national zip codes and not APO or FPO numbers then they were delivered inside the USA. With overseas numbers, a list would be available from the Post Office. So far I have been fine tuning the logic of the arguments here without donating alot of time. Someone get me a source document or link to same from the shipping of these KC ballots to work with and I'll get a list of Federal and Military Post Office numbers overseas. I'll get a friend to run a script or put it in a Spreadsheet and I'll run a check on the ballots sent. No need for a full address, just need the overseas post office number which I can then compare pretty easily. Maybe this breakdown of actual mailing locations will support or crush the statements made by KC and the SOS. Guess which one I'm beting on.
Posted by: Mark Beyer on February 17, 2005 05:55 PMMicajah (http://crokersack.blogspot.com/2005/01/federal-write-in-absentee-ballot.html) has a good post on the legality of the FWAB for state and local positions (it's not), but the SOS believes that they can be used to vote for state and local positions anyway. I guess this is just another example of how squishy election laws are in this state.
The real question is how many of these ballots contained votes for governor. If it's a significant number and favors Rossi, theoretically the Dems could make a case that those ballots should not have been counted (and would probably have a good case). It will be interesting to see if that comes up in the election contest. My guess is that the number of votes for state and local races on these ballots is fairly small due to the uncertain legal status of the ballot for that purpose.
Mark is still working on trying to determine when the military ballots were actually sent out, but even if King county did get them all into the mail by October 8 as they claim, the bottom line is that a high percentage of the overseas military voters never got them. Per King county, 3055 ballots were mailed to overseas military personnel. Since King county received 1342 FWABs, which can only be used by overseas military personnel, it would seem that at a minimum 44% of the overseas military personnel in King county received their regular absentee ballots too late. This number is likely higher if you figure that some number of these voters might have been too busy to try and find a FWAB and vote at the last minute.
Posted by: MCL on February 17, 2005 09:32 PM