May 03, 2005
Glaring Holes
Monday's editorial in The Olympian is all about glaring holes:
The new bills, once signed into law by the governor, should plug the glaring holes from the 2004 election.
As one sharp reader puts it "Only
The Olympian would claim that allowing more absentee balloting "plugs" loopholes in the law".
It sounds like The Olympian is competing with the P-I to see which editorial board has the most glaring holes in its heads.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 03, 2005
01:02 AM | Email This
1. More and more of the small County's are going to all-mail-in ASAP. If they already have 70%+ mail-in, they probably have to. The cost and problems with the polls are prohibitive.
That said...we need to focus on all the holes in the mail-in voting and have a bulletproof.foolproof method of validating signatures. Some smaller County's do an outstanding job of this and have a process for identifying questionable signatures and follwoing up with the voter to verify it is their ballot.
Not bulletproof but reasonable and thorough.
I do not trust KingCo with this process however.
We need qualified Party observors to be able to identify questionable sigs and a process to validate those sigs. No doubt!
2. Mr. C, let's face the truth. It is a lot easier to count 10,000 votes than 3 million. It is also a lot easier to administer.
But the point here is that according to Gregoire, "it is a tie vote". There are too many problems to honestly say who won or lost the election.
The Logan deposition, after lots and lots of coaching, is pretty damning. I still say it is a tie. Either revote or flip a coin. Or give each candidate a pull of the slot machine till one hits the jackpot.
3. Ok, send out a small ink sheet so they can put their thumb print on it. Then match prints onthe envelope. Use the signature if the prints don't match. Call back if neither match. This ay any shenanigans allows the culprit to be tracked down. You know, multiple votes felon voting, etc
4. I don't see how moving to all-mail balloting removes any 'holes'. That the newspaper would just let that one go by without questioning it is beyond me.
And what if they DO have new election laws? King County didn't follow a bunch of them last time; what will make them follow them this time??
5. Hey, and one more thing. Let's get rid of the hanging chad concept. Let's not bring in the Hogwart's School of Wizardry whenever we have a new election.
Divination of voter intent has got to stop. Voters need to know that if they screw up a ballot they need to ask for another or their ballot won't count.
I mean if someone can't draw a straight line from one point to another, their vote doesn't deserve to be counted. Obviously, I am for a tight standard.
6. What, you expect the local msm to sit on the sidelines. They are nothing more than a wholly owned subsidiary of the King/Pierce Democratic Machine. Perhaps the worst of the lot is the paper that withheld information from the public regarding the character of Tacoma’s former Police Chief/murderer. In fact, generally speaking you can count on them to run headlines such as this one from today’s paper that give a particular slant to every story: GOP gets to count contest its way
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/4829192p-4438388c.html
7. tape your ballot to your income tax return..
8. Every once in a while the propaganda machine makes a big mistake. This was one of them. I am confident that the editrorial staff of the Daily Zero (DZ) missed it though.
They did admit that there were "glaring holes." If the DZ admits it, when their candidate wins, you can bet their candidate actually lost.
If they can admit there were "glaring holes" in an election that was separated by 129 votes out of millions then the election contest should be successful.
Michele, it isn't that the DZ opposes corrupt elections that go their way. They have to know that mail-in cheating makes it easier to avoid detection. Everything is centralized so there is one major point in the process that can distort things and it is easier to cheat.
9. No one down here takes The Olympian seriously.
10. No one with greater depth or IQ than a tuna tin takes the News Buffoon seriously either. Kind of a instructive watching how ‘mainstream’ journalists have gone from a position of being respected to irrelevancy in a single generation. One might advance the case that they have gone the way of ‘buggy whip manufacturers’ and that they are losing market share due to advances in technology, I don’t buy that however. My take on it is that their disintegration is the end product of what started as politicization of the top journalism schools in the country. What is left of a once a well thought-of profession was inevitable, as has almost everything else that the ‘elites’ of the 60’s generation have left their mark on.
11. "tape your ballot to your income tax return..
Posted by righton at May 3, 2005 08:26 AM"
It would be more accurate to say, "tape your ballot to a blank check."
Trust me.
12. I'm with swatteron this one. If we are forced into all mail-in ballots (and it looks like we will be) tighter controls are very necessary. First-PURGE THE VOTER ROLLS AND REREGISTER..then
If ya can't draw that straight line...ballot rejected!
If ya forget to sign...ballot rejected!
No valid PHYSICAL state address...ballot rejected!
If yer a felon...ballot rejected!
If yer dead....ballot rejected!
NO "DO OVERS"...this is an election...NOT T-Ball
It ain't that hard.
As to verification methods....we already have "inkless" technology available. New ballots could be prepared with a scale drawing of the human hand. Have an arrow pointing to the thumb for them folks that seem to have trouble drawing the aforementioned straight line. Have a box printed on the ballot that is pre-treated for printing. Another arrow pointing to the box with instructions to "PRESS THUMB HERE"....
13. The voting process is easy enough for a fourth grader in the Public Indoctrina...Education system now. There is no reason to make it so that a four year old can vote unless the Dumbocrapies are too stupid, lazy and/or belligerent to follow the existing rules.
The example to the sheep in the Dumbocrapies party is to follow the Dumbocommie Leaders by ignoring all the laws and just doing what they want and then arguing with whoever calls them on their selfish and criminal behaviour.
Not that I have an opinion mind you, subjective or not.
14. Clear this up for me---do they (the Dems) want more socialism or do they want more anarchy?
15. naw, triple register, lie, cheat in the name of proving how bad their mail idea is, thus forcing a return to regular old fashioned voting
16. Swatter, you say, "Voters need to know that if they screw up a ballot they need to ask for another or their ballot won't count." All that does is give the crooks one more ballot to stuff when none are looking their way. I say we insist they be in the state come voting day or don't vote. Insist they come to the polls physically or don't vote (those who are too lazy already do that) and insist that they get an indelible ink tattoo on their hand or forehead when they are admitted to the booth to vote.
Any cries of, "too inconvenient" should be met with LIBERTY WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE CONVENIENT! GROW UP! Any cries of unfair should be met with NEITHER IS CREEPING ANARCHY OR SOCIALISM! DEAL WITH IT AND GROW UP! Any cries of "this will ruin my metrosexual manicure" should be met with FREEDOM ISN'T FREE! STOP BEING A FLIPPING PANSY AND GROW UP! Make those who DON'T vote pay stupidity taxes to those of us that DO vote. Then put those morons in some school besides a government funded hell-hole and teach them what it is like to live behind an Iron Curtain, a Berlin Wall or in North Korea or Red China. And then SLAP THEM UNTIL THEY GROW UP!