I just obtained a redacted version of Logan's deposition transcript.
So new, I haven't even read it myself yet.
Warning: it's 436 pages.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 25, 2005 06:34 PM | Email ThisI remember seeing that these numbers where not so accurate. I could be wrong. But Did anything get released on the actual count per accuvote machine? And how that compared with the results of the manual recount. I saw the Issaquah numbers and they were off. and it changed each time it was recounted. But I guess with all those provisional ballots run through the voting machines the real number could get lost.
Posted by: David Anfinrud on April 25, 2005 06:59 PM(sound of crickets while everyone's reading)
Who will play Logan in the made-for-TV movie?
(not Weird Al)
Posted by: Danny on April 25, 2005 07:22 PMNot an accountant, not a manager, just a paper pusher who doesn't know the laws and is not looking for any more work for himself.
I would like to point out that the Elections department allowed only one observer from each party in the very large room where this took place, and they (the observers) were cloistered away in a far corner of the room, behind a table. They were not allowed to walk around and monitor the various tables where the canvassing took place unless they were accompanied by a supervisor. On many occasions, the workers would get up to make phone calls to the Poll Inspectors, or would look up voting registration records, and this was done outside the area, not under the observation of observers.
This is my first post on this deposition; I imagine that I will have many more.
Posted by: Tim B. on April 25, 2005 07:39 PMQ.
I'm trying to get an image of the mechanics. Election worker receives a tray filled with provisional ballot envelopes that are still closed. They open up the -- or they, excuse me, compare the information on the outside of the envelope to information in the data base. If it is -- if it matches,
Yes, they compare the information against Rossi's lead and see if it matches their goal.
The ballot accountability forms didn't have a place to record such a hand count. Instead, they had a place to record the number of ballots counted by the Accuvote machine. A print-out from the machine was used to determine how many ballots from each precinct went through it.
Of the ballot accountability forms Stefan has posted, not one, to my recollection, has had an indication that the workers also hand counted the ballots on election night.
I suspect that Logan was speaking from memories of long ago in another place, when he was in Kitsap County -- where they didn't use those Accuvote machines, and where they are still supposed to count the ballots after the polls close and before sealing them into containers for transport to the counting center.
In King County, the machines at the polling places count the ballots and the votes on the ballots. Only when the machine totals are "zeroed out" in problem precincts are the ballots and votes counted a second or third time after that first count when the voters inserted their ballots into the machines.
Q. more than a hundred, more than a thousand?
A The number that's in my head, although I have to tell you that there are so many numbers associated with the work that I do on a daily basis, that I don't know how meaningful this is, but I believe that it was somewhere in the range of 258.
JUST ENOUGH TO STEAL AN ELECTION
Posted by: Splatter on April 25, 2005 08:27 PMQ Do you remember generally whether we're talking more than a hundred, more than a thousand?
A The number that's in my head, although I have to tell you that there are so many numbers associated with the work that I do on a daily basis, that I don't know how meaningful this is, but I believe that it was somewhere in the range of 258.
Posted by: Splatter on April 25, 2005 08:28 PMWhat idiots...
Posted by: Splatter on April 25, 2005 09:13 PMMe too!
Posted by: Splatter on April 25, 2005 09:26 PMHOWEVER, I note how quick he is to latch onto statutory requirements regarding WHEN he has to certify the election. He's not nearly as interested in statute when it comes to accuracy.
Posted by: Danny on April 25, 2005 09:26 PMOk Dean, how many voters were asked for their driver’s license in order to ID them at the polls?
Uh Oh, Garth Fell, Alycia Luke, and Marvin Lew just became the scapegoats for the discovery of extra ballots. Betcha they are now on admin leave.
Freudian slip, page 29 line 20. Ballots which cannot be verified “will be” counted?
Wow, I didn’t realize they could open envelopes then reseal them, 258 or more of them. How much total difference was there between the first count and the manual recount?
And the proper procedure for contacting unverified voters is by phone, not in person. And the office who should contact them is Carlos Webb. Not the political parties and not in person.
Page 57, now I saw there was an increasing number of votes between counts and recounts. Here Logan is saying that shouldn’t happen.
Man, Dean sure was squirming when questions were asked trying to nail him down on the absentee ballot numbers.
Wonderful, Dean Logan now feels a machine count is more accurate then a hand count. Way too late Dean, way late in this game.
The GOP legal dream team has the plums I wish WA Repubs had. Need more of them holding House and Senate seats.
Posted by: MB on April 25, 2005 09:43 PMThat's not to say that he shouldn't be canned immediately. Or even prosecuted.
Lucky for him that he's not a flack-taker outside the US....
Posted by: scott158 on April 25, 2005 09:49 PMQ
Were some provisional ballots not administered properly at polling sites?
A
That's correct.
Q
How many?
A
We don't know the -- we don't know the finite number of that. What we do know is that there were -- again, maybe I can find this in the report. We have -- we initially documented 348 provisional ballots which were improperly deposited in the precinct vote counters on election day. Additionally, in doing further poll site reconciliation efforts, we identified the potential universe of that going as high as 660, but we believe that it is not in fact 660, but somewhere in the midst of 348 to 660.
Meanwhile, they had us seated safely away from the workers with instructions not to leave our chairs or question workers. Our chairs were backed up to a big table that had stacks and stacks of boxes on it. We asked about the boxes and were told they were blank ballots. We wondered why these had not been destroyed when the polls closed. Double hmmm. We reported these things to our party leaders, but I won't even go into the "Brady Bunch" routine.
Posted by: lksimstrailgrammy on April 25, 2005 10:19 PMFirst signature check was done by the 40 temporary workers (page 54, lines 24-25 and page 55, line 13).
Signature verification for temporary workers appeared to by done by "on-the-job" training (page 54, line 6).
This indicates that the least-trained people are doing the most important job: checking if the absentee ballots are being signed by a registered voter (If they accept the ballot comparison, it counts).
Estimated number of absentee ballots inspected: 300,000 (please check for actual absentee ballots returned)
Number of hours actually worked per day, exluding breaks, lunch, waiting time and general discussions: 8 hours
Minimum minutes per individual signiture comparison (find, compare): 1 minute (?)
Maximum number of absentee ballots inspected per day: 40 emp. x 8 hrs x 60 minutes = 19,200 ballots
Days required to inspect 300,000 ballots: 300,000 ballots / 19,200 ballots/day = 15.625 days
Maximum days between Nov. 2 and Nov. 17 when the first results were announced: 15 days
(working on Nov. 2, one day off for weekend)
(I realize that some absentee ballots may have been inspected prior to Nov. 2, but it could be offset by using less people during that time.)
Having participated in the King County manual re-count, I can bet good money that the county election workers could not work 8 hours at that rate in a day, let alone 15 out of 16 days.
Posted by: saygold on April 25, 2005 10:19 PM
Likewise, the to-do about not returning unused ballots to the elections offices after the close of the polling places was wrong.
Who started those apparently bogus stories?
The number of blank ballots was ordered from the printer based on a figure calculated by taking 40 percent of the number of registered voters and rounding that number to the nearest 20. It was simply a way to put a round number on the printing order. It had zilch to do with the issuing of ballots to precinct inspectors.
Logan stated in his deposition that unused ballots were rendered unusable and returned with the other supplies after closing the polls, just as the law requires.
Posted by: Micajah on April 25, 2005 10:35 PMQueen G is going to be GONE!
I'm taking a break on PG 180..
L8ter!
Posted by: Splatter on April 25, 2005 10:38 PMSorry, had to do it, getting punchy
Posted by: Jim L on April 25, 2005 10:41 PMYes, it looks like Logan went from high school to the Kitsap County Auditor's office. After that was his only non-governmental job - lobbyist for the Labor Council. After being a labor lobbyist he became supervisor of elections for Kitsap County. Interesting.
Posted by: Larry on April 25, 2005 10:47 PMI wasn't talking about the blank ballots you mentioned. This is apparently what I recalled, and it was apparently Chris Vance who misunderstood what was said in the deposition about ballots issued to precinct inspectors on Friday and about the disposition of unused ballots after the closing of the polls on Tuesday.
I imagine the blank ballots you saw in boxes would naturally be needed during the machine recount to make duplicates of ballots that were rejected by the tabulating machines.
Posted by: Micajah on April 25, 2005 11:02 PMQ "So there is no record of how many ballots that were produced by the ballot-on-demand system that were not yet returned by voters?"
A "No."
Um, excuse me... am I missing something here...
If they don't know the number they had when they started, exactly how did they expect to reconcile when they were done??
He just goes on and on till he trips over his tongue.
Amazing.
From the SeasickTimes: King County election director answers questions under oath
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002252997_weblogan25.html
"The question is, do you know whether the returns in King County were accurate within 129 votes?" GOP attorney Rob Maguire asked Logan on page 225 of the 436-page deposition transcript, released Monday night by Rossi's office.
"No, I do not," Logan replied.
Really, are they "shrink wrapped" or is it like a bundle that has plastic wrap on it?
Posted by: Splatter on April 25, 2005 11:31 PMThis is how far apart these two camps are, they can't even agree on a damned word.
Posted by: Snake on April 25, 2005 11:41 PMA We start counting -- actually tabulating absentee ballots beginning at 7:00 o'clock in the morning on election day, and then that -- in an election of the volume of the November election, and that continues daily up until the certification of the election with some exceptions for weekends. In this case, a couple of Sundays.
RCW 29A.40.110
Processing incoming ballots.
(1) The opening and subsequent processing of return envelopes for any primary or election may begin on or after the tenth day before the primary or election. The tabulation of absentee ballots must not commence until after 8:00 p.m. on the day of the primary or election. …
A I believe what I said is that we can -- we should be able to produce a report from our voter registration election management system that indicates the number of ballots that were received back, but that would be -- that would be data dependent on and coming from the upload of the individual batches that those ballots were associated with. Which gets complicated in the sense that if a ballot is received and put into one batch, and then later it is rebatched because of a -- because the signature has been updated or something to that effect -- again, the technical elements of what that reporting capability is, what the technical reporting capability of that system is, is probably better to direct that to somebody more technically competent in the election management system than I.
As I see it, Dean Logan pretty much validated every GOP argument and admitted to at least two code violations.
If it's PROOF they want, it's PROOF they get.
Queen G's reign of pillage and plunder may end soon. And it could be a palace guard that brings her down!
I never thought this possible but, do we owe a debt of gratitude to Dean Logan for his honesty? Just asking.
Posted by: Splatter on April 26, 2005 12:40 AMA No.
Counterfeit ballots are coming soon. These were in house, how long until they come from other sources?
Regarding page 93, line 19: "...an election board would include at least one judge from each of the two--the two major parties." I think this is more wishful thinking than anything else.
Unfortunately, many election boards in Seattle in the November 2004 election were entirely composed of Democrats. In some instances, poll judges would claim to be Democrats, but they would "serve" as Republicans. In other cases, people would claim to be Republicans but they would turn out to be Democrats.
One example that comes to mind is a case in which a so-called "Republican" turned out to have donated $100 to the DNC.
The Republican party appoints, or designates, the Republican pollworkers. The main problem continues to be a lack of Republican volunteers, particularly in the Seattle area.
It's off-topic, of course, but I hope that many genuine Republicans volunteer in this next election cycle to be pollworkers and observers.
Posted by: Tim B. on April 26, 2005 05:55 AMPage 381, line 6: "My understanding is that there were provisional ballots where in verifying the registration, they did find that there was not a signature image or a -- an incorrect signature image, but that based on verification of the registration, those ballots were counted. So they were not set aside for further research. They were not coded as rejected. They were coded as valid provisional ballots and put into the ballot stream."
Posted by: Tim B. on April 26, 2005 06:05 AMI mentioned this topic when Stefan sent out the 35 page pdf fax "Election was fraudulently certified", when Logan said that he noticed previously that many ballots were accepted by workers without a signature on file. I said I bet he didn't follow-up on this. When you have an entrenched procedural action, and you are the new guy, just because you nicely asked "stop that" doesn't mean anyone will. As a manager I had to check on processes that I felt needed modification. When you perform an action over many years, the temptation to continue that action is very high. Looks like my summarization on this panned out again.
This information is stunning. That email to Ron Sims warning him that the house of cards is blowing down is an anemic attempt to say in your best falsetto voice: "Help me, Help me" (The Fly).
Where are the mouthy headless one or nellie boy? Notice others have shut up lately? Cat got your tongue, or did the truth finally set you free. Come on over the the right side and leave the dark side of the force!!!
NUFF SAID & More later!!!!
Pudster
Posted by: Puddybud on April 26, 2005 07:23 AMHow about you posting a nice few paragraphs detailing the following:
1. All of the Election Code laws Logan admitted to violating in his deposition.
2. The errors you found over the past few months that many disgregarded or claimed that you were incorrect that Logan now confirmed.
3. A simple listing of the various discrepencies in the votes, i.e, number of felon votes, prov. ballots fed into Accuvote, absentee discrepencies, ballotless voters, etc.
Maybe you could submit the above few paragraphs to the PI to see if they would print it.
And one final point, GREAT JOB ON THE WORK YOU HAVE DONE SINCE THE ELECTION.
Posted by: dmeyers on April 26, 2005 07:53 AMAt best, she was being exceedingly sloppy. At worst, she was a plant. She was clearly tipping the scales in the direction of the 'rats while counting ballots. Even her democrat counterpart (some can be honest) cried foul a few times.
I guess the spotted owl broach she was wearing should have been the first clue.
Posted by: Mr. Grabbit on April 26, 2005 08:30 AMAnalyze and comment all you want on everything, the election was a fraud. I just want to know why Gregoire didn't offer Logan a cabinet position, or possible he is now her houseboy at home cleaning.
Who started those apparently bogus stories?
Logan stated in his deposition that unused ballots were rendered unusable and returned with the other supplies after closing the polls, just as the law requires.
Posted by Micajah at April 25, 2005 10:35 PM
Micajah,
Only ballots still in shrink wrap were returned. They were asked to destroy the ones outside the wrap. The crat inspector signed for receipt of the goods, but not on a specific count. What's to stop the opening of many shrink-wrapped packages in order to release the singles? Imagine what a bad crat would do in that situation. Logan had too many "I believe", "I think", "I don't believe", "something like that" in his answers for me to be out-right comfortable.
"I believe" this is one of many solid "jaw dropper" parts of the depo...as CV stated.
Posted by: MB on April 26, 2005 09:05 AMTucker, good point. But I would add that in the case of KCEs, "culture" applies in the sense of the science experiments that gave us penicillin.
He claims that there could be cases in which the initial rejection of a ballot was overcome but never changed in the database. For example, a rejection based on a signature mismatch could be cured by the submission of a new signature card by the voter -- which could cause a previously rejected ballot to be accepted.
He then claims there "may have been" post-certification actions to clean up the database and correct any such errors.
Based on what information could anyone go back and clean up the database? Would they simply take the empty envelopes and check to see if there were any listed as rejected ballots? When would there be enough time to do all that?
That seems like a strange statement for Logan to make -- although it would be consistent with a desperate attempt in the period from 29 Dec 2004 to 7 Jan 2005 to make their list of voters who voted match the number of ballots counted.
I wonder if there's any way to know how much of the reduction in the gap between the number of voters and the number of ballots was the result of such "clean-up work" after the final count was (sort of but not quite) certified by King County.
Posted by: Micajah on April 26, 2005 10:47 AMLogan said how many were added when he appeared before the King County Council on February 14, 2005. According to the video recording in the county archives, he said there were 1,018 additional voters credited with voting during the few days after Dec. 29, 2004, as Logan's gang tried to reduce the discrepancy between the numbers of voters credited and ballots counted that was reflected in their "preliminary list."
Could there have been a good factual basis for adding more than a thousand names to the list? He didn't say, so far as I could tell in the part I watched, what evidence was relied on to change the voter registration database to show that those 1,018 voters voted in November 2004.
Posted by: Micajah on April 26, 2005 06:11 PMMy guess it the "shrink wrapped blank ballots" are in stacks of 500 or 1000. How many would be in a box? 10 thousand?
This is really bugging me. If there was a massive dump of fraudulent votes into the system, it might correlate to the count in a box or stack of "blank ballots".
Inquiring minds want to know.
Posted by: Splatter on April 26, 2005 08:40 PMI totally agree. Someone please help me understand what happened on John Carlson's show this afternoon when he interviewed SOS Sam Reed regarding the deposition of Dean Logan. Something did not ring true. Before it was over I had a strong gut feeling that someone has their thumb on Sam Reed.
It reminded me of when John Gibson was guest hosting a number of weeks ago. Gibson was clearly uninformed about the depth of detailed information possessed by his audience, and he was making glib comments that minimalized the seriousness of the mounting evidence that an election had been stolen. That's how Sam Reed came across today. He sounded like he was unaware of the facts that have been disclosed on Stefan's BLOG and the Evergreen Freedom Foundation website during these past months. He sounded "spacey", as if his attention was elsewhere. His replies sounded scripted. He came across as not being in touch with the connection between his responsibilities as Secretary of State, and the repeated disregard for state and federal election laws, by himself, and by others in positions of responsibility.
Sam Reed has a strange way of interpreting election law. Of particular concern is his repeated refusal to acknowledge his job description as defined by law. Bob Williams at EFF challenged the SOS with a list of 18 points of non compliance with laws and regulations. http://www.effwa.org/vip/SOS%20Side%20by%20Side.PDF To each point, the SOS has responded with the same sort of "scripted" spin that he mouthed on radio today. Bob Williams came back and challenged each and every one of the replies of the SOS with documented arguments to support Williams's position that the SOS is out of compliance in regard to the duties of his elected position. Yet, Sam Reed still clings to the position that by law he "has no authority to . . ."
My question to that is, if not he, then who the heck does have the authority to ensure that Washington elections are run by the current laws and guidelines. It has even come out that the Dems attorneys were allowed to get away with arguing their case for "re-canvassing" of rejected ballots between the initial count and the first recount by using laws that are out dated, instead of the current ones which forbid this. Even the judge got away with making a decision based on "old" laws.
Chelion