In honor of Dean Logan's deposition today, I'm posting a video clip of Dean Logan's opening statement to the canvassing board on December 15, during the manual recount.
Some of my favorite quotes:
4:34
it's important to point out that lack of public trust and confidence comes also from the continued dispelling of urban myths and political rhetoric. We have heard simple phrases used in the weeks since the election about stolen elections, outright fraud, missing ballots and misinformation about added votes during the recount. The reality is that most of those things if not all of those things are unsubstantiated, and the record will show that in this election cycle nothing was stolen in this election. there was no fraud in this election. There will be a record and a transparent accounting for this election
2:45
There were mistakes that were made in this election process and I have before and again want to today acknowledge that those mistakes were made. I take responsibility for that as does the staff of the King County Elections division and I certainly apologize to those voters and those parties who were affected by that process. At the same time I want to acknowledge the level of openness and transparency and responsibility that we've taken in that process.3:30
When it's the appropriate time to do so and when we have all the information available we will do a full report to the citizens of King County as well as to the King County Council on the things that have occurred during this election and the ways in which those will be addressed.3:56
we remain committed to administer the elections in King County independent of political interests and influence and staying focused on the laws and administrative rules that we operate under.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 18, 2005 12:45 PM | Email This
Somebody fetch him Teri Schiavo's feeding tube, he's gonna need it when the mountain of evidence comes tumbling down on him.
Posted by: Andy on April 18, 2005 12:57 PMIf I may suggest a petition be added to Sound politics in which the people who sign are giving a vote of no confidence to King County elections and Director Logan. I don't trust that my vote will be counted properly on election day. And when enough people feel that way, it is time to make a change.
Dean Logan was hyped as the best elections director around... but guess what folks sometimes hype is just hype and nothing more. He was brought in to clean up problems. The same problems were repeated, and new ones surfaced causing a worst case scenario, a compromised race.
Here's some advice to their attorney's. Start with districts that had more than 1800 votes than voters, then look for the felons, then look for the stonewalling, then look for the unaccounted for provisionals illegally fed into the accuvote, then look for the kajillion absentee ballots with city hall as the home address, then look for uncounted ballots in storage lockers, the look for the ashes of what should be an audit trail.
Then just admit that the margin of error is several magnitudes larger than the margin of victory.
Posted by: Andy on April 18, 2005 01:20 PM"GreGore is the governor like a fish rides a bicycle"
Posted by: DeadManVoting (aka Iguana) on April 18, 2005 01:53 PMThe best part of this is that the King/Pierce Democrat Machine will never again have the ‘free pass’ that they have enjoyed the last few decades. Democratization of the dissemination of information is something they better get used to.
They still don’t believe that many of those voters who have always voted Democrat not continue to do so. Hey, guess when my mother says that she is so disgusted with what has happened in this election that she will never vote for another Democrat that is saying something. I think she was exaggerating, but for her to even say something like that is illuminating.
All we need is for a small percentage of the ‘died in the wool’ Democrats to consider voting for an alternative and their hegemony is over.
The combination of the CAO and this electoral mess, both of which they can thank Sims and company for, will end their reign.
I pulled a 'Logan' and 'Sims-ed' the entire thing, resulting in a horrible 'Gregoire'. Quick, grab me a cold 'Huennekens'.
Posted by: Larry on April 18, 2005 04:07 PMIf we could just get the unions to believe that this mess will make them look bad and hurt them in their quest for power and they'll do the job for us!
Victor of Port Angeles
Posted by: Victor on April 18, 2005 05:29 PM1) His arrogance is such that he can't even accept as a point of discussion that *His* department did something wrong.
2) His incompetence is such that he is prone to accepting or even predicting outcomes simply based on what he thinks/wants to be true, or based on what others tell him is true, without any due diligence to find out for himself.
3) He was so sure of the steps they'd taken to cover up and obfuscate the facts, that he never thought he'd have to worry about anyone finding out the real true, and basically thought we'd all have given up by now.
I can't think of any other possibilities, and none of these speak well of Mr. Logan and his department. Even if he was the "victim" here of a staff run amok, he is still ultimately responsible for not keep things in check.
Posted by: Jason on April 18, 2005 05:57 PMAmazing, can't wait for election season, like shooting ducks!
Posted by: GS on April 18, 2005 06:37 PMToo bad Mr. Logan didn't know the first rule of political speech:
Don't say what you're not!"
He just gave it all away by mentioning "stolen" and "fraud."
Posted by: Mac on April 18, 2005 07:33 PMDethrone Queen Christine!
Posted by: Ran on April 19, 2005 07:32 AM