Even as the Democrat Party and its spokesmen at the lunatic fringe blogs and editorial boards fixate on the issue of felon voters, there is an awful lot more to the election contest than proportional deduction of felon votes. After all, why would the Rs be spending so much time deposing King County election officials, unless they planned to present their findings in court? Here is Chris Vance's response to fomer Gov. Gary Locke's desperate and unethical public statement yesterday:
Vance reiterated that the Republican case is not just about illegal votes and proportional analysis. State law requires counties to reconcile the results of the election before the certification, and recent depositions of King County election officials have added to the mountain of evidence regarding how flawed King County’s reconciliation was. “In some areas there are still hundreds more ballots than voters, in others there are more voters than ballots, and now we learn that King County had no real security over blank ballots and no valid absentee audit trail. Those facts will be part of our case,” said Vance.Who'd a thunk. State law requires King County election officials to do certain things, which all the evidence, including their own admissions, proves that they did not do.
Croker Sack has a list of some of the things that state law requires but that King County did not do.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 11, 2005 11:08 AM | Email ThisI think the Republicans need to focus the light more heavily on the mystery ballots and overvoting in all their official statements. The MSM and Democrats have seized on the Republicans and BIAW's release of illegal votes due to felons, because this is the only issue they can argue and defend.
Posted by: TG on May 11, 2005 11:22 AMYou characters based your whole silly case on the felon vote. Now that that has totally fallen apart, you're trying to re-write your court case?
Sorry, losers, that dog don't hunt.
Posted by: Nelson on May 11, 2005 11:43 AMHow is it possible to re-write a court case before the case has gone to court?
Idiot.
Posted by: Larry on May 11, 2005 11:52 AMWhat a dim wit you are. The Rs have NEVER based their case solely on the felon vote. Did you bother to read this post and the quote from Vance before you commented?
Posted by: liberty4all on May 11, 2005 11:53 AMstarboardhelm, I think President Bush lost WI by about the number of illegal votes mentioned in Malkin's column (A little under 5,000). Where is the liberal handwringing??
Posted by: Michele on May 11, 2005 11:54 AMWhat is your special interest in the Dems prevailing? Are you so corrupt that you can't see the evidence of corruption? Maybe it's all just every day stuff for you. You need to wake up dude, if you don't care about fairness for everyone, eventually you will be on the side crying foul and no one will help your cause. You need to stand behind this for your own self interest. This isn't just partisan politics. I know I'm trying to reason with an unreasonable person.
Posted by: REBEL on May 11, 2005 12:13 PMEnhanced ballots, the original ballots permanently altered after they were told not to by the SOS.
Provisional ballots illegally feed into counting machines.
More ballots counted than voters.
Improperly altered tally sheets.
Ballot security, ballots found 9 times during the recount, more after.
Felons voting.
The dead voting.
Multiple votes from single voters.
Improper reconciliation tabulations, i.e.. counting the ballots on hand and working from that number instead of looking the rolls and reconciling ballots on hand to the rolls.
Certification of an unreconciled elections.
Did I miss anything.
And that's just what's public. The pile of male bovine scat is too deep and too smelly to call fertilizer.
Posted by: JCM on May 11, 2005 12:17 PMNo amount of reason will convince them that there is any merit to the Republican case.
The key Democrat mantra is always denial.
Posted by: Jeff B. on May 11, 2005 12:21 PMPersonally, I don't care as much about individual felons voting as I do about people voting multiple times, and ballots being printed on demand for more multiple voting. What gives anybody the right (or the gall to think they have the right) to vote multiple times when everyone else can vote only once? Why is some Dem activist more important than me?
Posted by: Shannon K on May 11, 2005 12:26 PMThey are widely exposed on unaccounted for votes.
Posted by: Andy on May 11, 2005 12:34 PMYour credibility goes down when you try to defend Vance defending his own inanity.
Posted by: Tom Franklin on May 11, 2005 12:38 PMYour credibility goes down when you try to defend Vance defending his own inanity.
Posted by: Tom Franklin on May 11, 2005 12:38 PMOK, but show the relevance.
Ballots to be enhanced did not go to the canvassing board?
Questionable absentee signature matches did not go the the canvassing board?
Was there some report somewhere that no absentee ballots were rejected on the basis of signature match?
Posted by: StephenR from Houston on May 11, 2005 01:43 PMIn the comments to Transcript of Judge Bridges Rulings we see several people lament what a mistake it is for the Rs to put so much weight in the felon vote.
In the May 7 comments Keith and Deborah point out:
it appears that Judge Bridges is almost gently chastising the Petitioners for NOT alluding to fraud in their argument.
And Yes! On pg 13 - the Judge is carefully explaining to the Petitioners - that though the rule they want the court to follow is ok and all - they would be better off using fraud in their argument (as in Foulkes) so the court wouldn't have to burden them with proof of causation.....
I, too, thought that the felon strategy was wrong and that the Rs need to play every card they have. "State Law Requires..." is a good strategy.
I had to wonder if someone on the petitioners' side was trying to "throw the fight." If the WA Governors race cannot be successfully contested with the problems documented in KC, then how can any contest succeed?
Piece 2:
Locke makes desperate appeal to Rossi Stefan points out that Locke is a partner in the law firm preparing Rossi's contest.
Might Davis, Wright & Tremaine not be putting forward the best arguments? The potential for Conflicts of Interest abound.
Posted by: StephenR from Houston on May 11, 2005 02:30 PM
This is why the requirement to refer ballots of questionable validity to the canvassing board is relevant.
Those 785+ folded, creased, improperly cast provisional ballots should have been identified, removed, and referred to the canvassing board.
Instead, they were left in the ballot boxes, and the problem was concealed rather than remedied.
Since none of them can be tied to a particular voter, it doesn't matter that most of them were later thought to be cast by eligible voters. The only way to remedy the problem at the polling place (short of excluding all the ballots from the polling places most affected by the illegitimate ballots) was to remove the ballots that weren't lawfully in the ballot boxes.
Only ballots among those 785+ which could be shown to be valid should have been put back into the vote count. Of course, the secrecy of the ballot makes that an unlikely possibility, but the Demwits could try to get some of them back into the count.
The petitioners ought to ask the judge to do now what King County should have done before Nov. 17.
It's backwards to require the Republicans to argue for exclusion of some of those ballots or to discount their effect through "proportional analysis," when they all should have been removed before Nov. 17.
Posted by: Micajah on May 11, 2005 03:08 PMLet us not forget: 1. The Supreme Court must accept the case; likely, but not guaranteed. 2. The Supreme Court will not accept evidence not presented in the trial court. They argue the law, not the evidence. So you have to make the trial court count.
Please correct me if I am wrong on either point.
-----
Micajah, thanks for the relevance.
Idiot."
Listen, you joker. You're the idiot. If you don't make a claim in the original filing of the lawsuit, you can't just bring it up during the case because you want to.
The whole case of the GOP (or I should say non-case, in the interests of accuracy) was based on their claim that if you find illegal votes, primarily from felons, and then use proportional analysis to adjust both candidates totals, then Rossi would have ended up with more votes than Gregoire and the election should be voided.
That's it. End of story. Like I said, now that the data doesn't even support anything remotely like that, you can't just come in any say, "Okay, that didn't work, how about this one?"
You're the idiot if you think court cases work that way.
Posted by: Nelson on May 11, 2005 03:21 PMYou're getting all agitated and you know how that makes you incontinent. Do me a favor and let the grown-ups do the heavy lifting.
Are you going to make a volcano again this year for the Science Fair?
Posted by: alphabet soup on May 11, 2005 03:29 PMYou're the joker, you're the smoker, you're the midnight toker. I suggest you lay off for a while, it's affecting your psyche.
They could not depose Logan and Huennekens until they had filed their claims for the court case, correct? Didn't the depositions happen AFTER the claims were filed?
Therefore, all of the admitted violations of WACs and state laws that were discovered during the depositions CAN be allowed into the case. These were not part of the original claim because the relevant witnesses were not yet deposed.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. The WAC violations are based on the witness depositions, which happened after the original claim was filed. But these nonetheless become part of the original argument.
Posted by: Larry on May 11, 2005 04:06 PMThere is nothing that is now being argued by the Republicans which was not originally pled in the petition. Petitions don't need to cite chapter and verse of the RCW and WAC to plead the case adequately. Alleging neglect, errors, failure to comply with legal obligations and duties, etc., is sufficient to put everyone on notice of the nature of the case.
To the contrary, some allegations in the petition have not been found to be supported by the available evidence sufficiently to proceed with them at trial -- so the Republicans have indicated they will not pursue them.
Nelson, this is the way things work under the law, strange as it may seem to you.
Posted by: Micajah on May 11, 2005 04:31 PMBut hey, we live in a Democrat(cy), don't we? He takes every advantage of it that he can, even if he rarely comes up with an original thought.
Strangely, since all of this is out of my hands, I find myself with a strange contentment as I cozy up to see the trial start.
Steve
Posted by: Patches Pal on May 11, 2005 05:11 PMI'm not sure that he's up to PDF's just yet....
Posted by: alphabet soup on May 11, 2005 08:06 PMYou good for nothing lazy narcaleptic SOB.
Y A W N
You don't do a damn thing around here to help out, Mr. Flannel PJ and rubber duckie slippers.
Y A W N
You don't ever give me ANY attention.
Y A W N
I'm going to the bar tonight to get some attention.
YAWN
Oh, and by the way, I'm pregnant and your brother Horatio is the father.
Yawwwwwwwwwhuh?
I find a lot of interesting and persuasive information on these boards. Nelson's posts do neither. His posts often misstate the facts. His posts are so unpersuasive that I can only draw the conclusion that he isn’t trying to be persuasive.
If he is not trying to inform or persuade the reader to think about something differently then he must be posting for a different reason. The best I can tell is either he doesn’t understand what he is saying or he is purposely trying to mislead and incite the reader. I believe it is the latter.
For me I chose to ignore his misleading and inflammatory posts and not lower myself to his level by leveling personal attacks on others and making misleading statements. I would suggest that making personal attacks against Nelson makes you no better then him. You should be able to soundly rebut his untruthful claims without resorting to name calling, or better yet ignore them altogether and maybe he will get bored like an adolescent teenager and go away.
Come to think of it....No one has even mentioned the KC Canvass board tapes.........yet.....
snicker.....
Posted by: Deborah on May 11, 2005 11:41 PMThank you.
Posted by: Steven on May 12, 2005 09:39 AMIt is the Democratic Party. But it's not the party of Democracy.
Thank you.
Posted by: Larry on May 12, 2005 10:14 AMI believe that Thomas Jefferson described the concept of a Monocrat well just prior to his first retirement in 1794, and the Democratic/Democrat party would aptly fall into that description. What do you think, Steven?
Having said that, we now live in a state where if you are a sufferer of a private, uncontrollable medical condition (allergies), and attempt to purchase a legal product over the counter for relief, you are required to provide a higher level of proof (photo ID, government issued) for that, as opposed to the utility bill that suffices for proof to vote.
How wonderful to live in a state that is so DEMOCRATic, and progressive. (Steven, since I got the letters all there as you desire, will that suffice as a proper moniker for me to identify of whom I am speaking?)
Steve
Posted by: Patches Pal on May 12, 2005 10:17 AMThink that if the product were RU486 vs Tylenol Allergy complete that some would feel differently? Would it have been enacted? And would you be required to provide photo ID to get it?
Yessiree, I love the DEMOCRATic party, and all the democratics serving in our government. :)
Posted by: Patches Pal on May 12, 2005 10:27 AMNow, it's Howard Dean's Democrat Block Party (Featuring Janet Reno).
Now go get me a soda, Steve
Posted by: Big M on May 12, 2005 10:50 AMNow that's funny, I don't care who you are!
(What are all these democraTICS worried about?!)
Posted by: alphabet soup on May 13, 2005 07:39 AM