One of the more excitable lunatic-fringe bloggers reported this weekend that "KC Elections reconciled results. (So there)" Said blogger bases his giddy report on a conversation with the spokeswoman for King County Elections. However, it appears that our good friend's report unwittingly supports our case instead of his own:
According to KC Elections Communications Specialist Bobbie Egan, in addition to the poll books, there is a “big binder” down at the office that contains all the reconciliation data Logan cited above, for all 2616 precincts. Unfortunately, there is no compilation of the data, but this is somewhat understandable considering the complicated and subjective nature of the reconciliation process itself."no compliation of the data" is hardly a confirmation that anything was reconciled, but that's not even my main point here. The blogger who wrote the report doesn't claim to have actually examined any of these files himself, but we're relieved to know that such files might exist. Blogger concludes:
I asked Egan if anybody – Rossi’s attorneys, the BIAW, know-it-all right-wing bloggers – had actually asked to see this binder, and she answered yes… a single Seattle reporter.Now I've spoken with Bobbie Egan myself on a number of occasions, and I've always found her to be helpful and courteous. As it turns out, I even called her last Friday to try to get a phone appointment to ask Dean Logan some questions about reconciliation (no appointment yet, but I hope to hear back soon). One suspects that Ms. Egan chose to hand the scoop about the "big binder" to this particular blogger because he is too credulous a fan of Ron Sims to report any bad news and/or too naive to ask any interesting follow-up questions.If Rossi supporters are so suspicious about whether King County actually reconciled the results of this election, why aren’t they interested in examining the actual reconciliation records? Why instead do they insist on focusing on voter creditation, a process that has absolutely nothing to do with precinct-by-precinct reconciliation?
It's certainly possible that there is no records request on file that explicitly refers to "that big binder", but it is also the case that others have asked for reconciliation reports and without success. Assistant Secretary of State Steve Excell told me that the SoS' requests for reconciliation reports have gone unfulfilled. I have also heard from members of the King County Council that their requests for reconciliation reports have not been satisfied and I've seen copies of the actual e-mail exchanges that prove this.
In my own experience, King County Elections has responded to some but not all of my public records requests. Given also that others have told me they've been unsuccessful obtaining reconciliation reports from King County, I've not always taken the trouble to put additional information requests in writing. Today I compiled a letter to Dean Logan recapitulating my various oustanding requests and memorializing a few new ones. I'm less than 100% confident all of these requests will be satisfied, but I hope to be proven wrong. Whatever King County can provide will undoubtedly move us closer to the truth, and whatever they decline to provide should at least demonstrate to my reasonable critics (if not to the more hysterical ones) why the data I'm working with is less than perfectly complete.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 22, 2005 02:42 PM | Email ThisI can just picture this BIG BINDER, as big as a 3 story house roaming the streets of downtown Seattle with huge firey red eyes, a Pinocchio nose and Dumbo Ears.
Seriously, I would be checking DATES of when anything was compiled and/or altered!!!!!!!
DATES & SIGNATURES OF WHOEVER RECORDED OR ALTERED INFORMATION. If dates & sigs missing...worthless.
To carry on as Goldstein does, it reguires a gross evasion of reality in that there are more than enough individual problems that merit further scrutiny, especially given the 129 vote margin of the victory.
Do remember that most of the claims that Goldstein and his invisible friend Lawyer X have made about the court case have proven false thus far. We'll see what the judge has to say about the Big Binder and all of the poll books.
Goldstein seems quite confident that the burden of proof is squarely in Rossi's corner, but Goldstein has a pretty good p0ker face to conceal his worries about everything that will come out that will not look at all good for Logan.
At this point, I don't trust anything that KC elections has done. I'm sure that they knew that the results would be just enough to put Gregoire over the top. Frankly, the FBI should have stormed the KC elections building and kicked everybody out to seize all of the records, computers, etc. There's an enormous amount of pressure on the Democrats to retain the governorship, enough pressure that somebody might just be doing something illegal to assure that the poll books etc. tell a story in favor of the Democrats.
I'm just sayin', bigger deceits have happened ...
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 22, 2005 03:16 PMIt's comedy, pure comedy.
Posted by: Jason on February 22, 2005 03:50 PMSo for those of you interested in reading those quotes in context, before trashing me: http://www.horsesass.org/wp-trackback.php/458
Posted by: David Goldstein on February 22, 2005 05:39 PMEven though Stefan did not provide the link, most of us knew exactly who he was talking about and in fact had already read your attempt to convince yourself that this election was a model for the rest of the nation.
I always read before I trash, but your analysis is still quited flawed because KC can't even rule on provisional ballots without a preliminary reconciliation of voters to precincts, however this reconciliation must happen before a final ballot to voter reconciliation that then includes all of the provisionals and other mishandled or wrong location votes that have then been moved to the correct precincts.
The concept is simple, but apparently still evades liberals, the number of ballots should equal the number of voters minus any ACP voters, voters credited with voting even though they did not, etc. You can spin all you want to say that Dean Logan does not have to provide this information, or that one reconciliation is enough, etc. but that does not explain why there's a discrepancy here, nor does it explain why King County has per capita discrepancies that are out of sync with the rest of the state or why much of the rest of the state was able to perform this reconciliation properly.
David, you should have also included explicit language and extensive ranting warnings.
I did not find courtesy common with many of your most ardent followers.
Of course, not everyone has had the same kind of home training that others have had.
Posted by: JG on February 22, 2005 06:38 PMDid you fill out the "correct" form for the requests you are making?
Do you need to fill out a separate form for each request? Isn't there a hard deadline by which a response must be made to your requests? Just curious.