As I've documented on many occasions there was an unprecedented meltdown at King County polling places last November: hundreds of unverified provisional ballots that went through the Accuvotes; hundreds of absentee voters who showed up at the polls and should have been given provisional ballots but were given regular ballots (think: possibility to vote twice!); various other procedures for ballot security and accounting that were not followed: voters who weren't asked to sign in, ballot accountability worksheets that were not filled in correctly if at all, etc.
The question is why? In Dean Logan's standard town hall talk, he says words to the effect that "we had record-breaking volumes in every aspect of the election". In fact, that is not true. There were record breaking in many aspects, including new registrations absentee voting, provisonal ballots cast and total turnout, the total number of people who voted at the polls actually decreased from 2000 to 2004. This table compares polling place ballots cast in the 2000 and 2004
| Ballot Type |
2000
|
2004
|
| Polling Place Ballots |
384,946
|
306,171
|
| Valid Provisional Ballots |
13,307
|
28,014
|
| Invalid Provisional |
3,775
|
4,332
|
| Total Polling Place |
402,028
|
338,517
|
Here's an example of this. Poll workers received only a couple of hours of training. How was that time spent? Some of it was taken away from the real issues of procedures for ballot security and accounting to ... instruction in using "People First Language Guidelines".
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 25, 2005
01:02 PM | Email This
Melt down? You are too polite. It is FRAUD plain and simple. The election was stolen. No other way to say it.
Posted by: VCRW on April 25, 2005 01:31 PMHow many of those 'people first' categories wouldn't want effective government that actually performs well, rather than wasting their children and grandchildren's inheritance?
Another example of voting for creating institutions out of people and policies that would enslave you.
Posted by: scott158 on April 25, 2005 02:50 PMI thought the Democrats were saying that only little old ladies worked the polls and we should be more tolerant of their mistakes. Since when do little old tadies start using disrespectful language towards voters? I've never encountered anything more than a few simple instructions to sign here, etc. from very polite, friendly people.
As with everything else though, Democrats are worried about the possibility that someone or something might slip through the cracks, thus the justification for giant new buildings dedicated to churning out language guidelines managing elections, etc. and a whole new statist infrastructure to manage every little aspect of our lives. From water barrels on our property, to how we speak, and whether or not we have the right to refuse service to someone we find offensive, etc. it just never ends.
Posted by: Jeff B. on April 25, 2005 03:05 PMA 110% increase in valid provisionals compared with a 15% increase in invalid provisionals. Seems like they weren't checked as thoroughly as in the past.
Posted by: Larry on April 25, 2005 04:20 PMThis is too much like Milwaukee.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on April 25, 2005 04:39 PMDon't forget that in Ukraine's first election last year, there were verified reports of people in buses or vans going from polling place to polling place and voting. Apparently, this is a well-known tactic in some circles.
Posted by: Mac on April 25, 2005 05:35 PMcan it be mere coincidence or is there some dark secret????
Enq minds want to know.
Well...First of all.....
It wasn't just a meltdown at the polls! The so-called meltdown evidently occurred in just about every aspect of the November election.
So far - discoveries and admissions of error have shown chaos in the ballot accounting - for every type of voting ballot (ie; poll, absentee, provisional)...and...
Chaos in the printing, mailing, receiving and counting of absentee ballots
Chaos in the distribution, logging, returning, processing, counting of provisional ballots.
Chaos in the maintenance of poll books,logging, data, audits..
Chaos in ballot security, blank ballots, provisional ballots, absentee ballots, ballots left in machines...blank ballots sent home with Democrat poll inspectors with no accounting of those ballots..
Chaos in voter eligibility - felons voted, non-citizens voted, non-residents voted....dead people voted..
Chaos in the vote counts, additonal ballots found in unusual places with each count and recount....
Chaos in signature verification on voter registration and absentee ballots that didn't match.
It just goes on and on and on...
This much chaos had to be controlled. The very fact that there were this many diverse problems in the election.. says to me - it was not random.
If there were a few mistakes - perhaps snowballing from one area - I could believe they were initiated from a random problem. But this many errors - made primarily by a certain party (Democrats)- just does not allow for a random theory! Unless the snowball was directed from the very top...but then it would have been controlled...which removes the randomness...
I know we have a poster here who explains this theory so much better than I do!
Using the bank as an example (snicker) of this kind of chaos..
It would be like - allowing people to cash checks without ID,and making those checks on a printer for them to cash, and allowing tellers to take their cash in the till home for the weekend - with no idea how much money they had, and allowing the management to simply initial the boxes of money that were brought back in the following Monday by the tellers - without counting, and noticing that some cash was actually left in the tills over the weekend instead of going home or being locked up and no one has a way to know how much money - or actual cash on hand that branch has at the end of the day - so the supervisor plays with some numbers on the night cash report and initials it when he has it looking balanced - but he really has no idea what the final cash totals are...