I'm listening to Democrat lawyer Kevin Hamilton make some hilarious arguments. If this is their case, they should give up now and spare themselves the expense and embarrassment. Among the howlers:
1) because the Republicans can't prove which (living) person cast the ballots that were cast in the names of dead people, those ballots should not be presented as illegal votes
2) the clearly falsified Mail Ballot Report was not actually falsified, even though its authors already admitted that it was falsified.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 23, 2005 10:54 AM | Email Thisbv
Posted by: bmvaughn on May 23, 2005 10:59 AMIf this is such a model election, God help us all.
Posted by: otto on May 23, 2005 11:03 AMThe evidence will speak louder than words.
We'll just wait and see...
Posted by: Raylene on May 23, 2005 11:04 AMIf they all were in one giant sealed package, shame on the GOP for making more of that element than it really is (looks petty and childish).
On the other hand it were lots of packages of 500 and there was no audit trail that all of the packages arrived to the polling places-> then this stinks as bad as the rest of the dead bodies in this election.
anybody know the facts on this?
The lack of audit trail on print-on-demand ballots is thin so I'd have to err on the side of corruption given the context of KC elections.
Posted by: Andy on May 23, 2005 11:13 AMWait a minute... Isn't that further evidence that the election is in question?
This election is like a computer that is full of spy-ware, viri and other malicious software. I'd give this advice to its owner: "Format the hard drive and start over!"
For anyone who's not listening, here's my brief, real-time synopsis:
...And now he's talking about how Stevens county doesn't verify signatures on provisional ballots, which is supposed to "offset" King County's provisional ballot nightmare??? Let's see, first off, I see that Stevens county had about 20,000 ballots. Total. King had almost 900,000. But they offset each other....yeah, right!
Oh, now here's the sob story about some lady who couldn't vote for Gregoire because the county "merged" her record with someone else's...
...now claiming 159 voters were disenfranchised due to mistakes at KC elections...he says Republicans are saying it's ridiculous to count those 159 votes NOW (which it is), but if I'm hearing him right, he's suggesting that they now count 159 additional (previously-uncounted) ballots! NOW!! And using signatures from people's driver's license, not the registered voter signature database! What is this guy smoking? Yep, he just said they're going to subpoena these uncounted ballots and bring them to the courtroom and get them added to the count!
That move REEKS of desperation if you ask me....
...people who moved and had problems with their registrations, so they were rejected...those need to be counted and added to the total too...etc....
Posted by: Scott on May 23, 2005 11:18 AMB-Rent is spinning.....
Posted by: Scott in Carnation on May 23, 2005 11:19 AMthis guy should have a few coctails like B-rented.
Posted by: Garret on May 23, 2005 11:19 AMI'm not impressed at all.
Posted by: Michele on May 23, 2005 11:26 AMKind like "You can't prove that that tree made a noise when it fell!" or "You can't prove that bears $%^& in the woods" or "You can't prove that there isn't going to be a global-warming caused famine in 2016", or... you get the idea.....
Posted by: Dogbert on May 23, 2005 11:33 AM"people make mistakes, but election officials all over the state tried their best" blah-blah
Posted by: Orange Robyn on May 23, 2005 11:37 AMBlah blah blah
Posted by: Scott on May 23, 2005 11:39 AMThe lack of discipline for the accounting is a valid point- but it won't hold water in trying to glue together the chain of fraud, especially if each worker left with a giant shrink wrap brick and arrived at the polling places with a giant shrink wrap brick.
Was it one shrink wrap brick or many small bricks? An audit on the former is really brain dead, while the latter requires more peeling of the onion ie an audit trail.
The danger is that something that might be purely hype can taint the validity of 20 other things which are purely fraud.
Posted by: Andy on May 23, 2005 11:42 AMY-A-W-N
Could someone please blame Bush or Tom Delay for something?
The only way you can challenge a ballot is if the fraudulent voter drives down to the election office and spontaneously confesses to fraud. Of course... he could be lying and there is no way to coroborate the story (remember? secret anonymous ballots?). Therefore, no challenged ballots ever! It's a Democrat paradise.
Posted by: knate on May 23, 2005 11:47 AMTherein lies the crux of the issue. How can you accurately account for all the ballots and determine if there are missing ballots, if you don't know how many you started off with?
Posted by: dragon on May 23, 2005 11:51 AMBut they still want to count more votes to correct the problem.
Why not ReVote and count all and only the legitimate votes?
Your point is right. The whole thing was infected my mutiple causes. How then can we know for sure. Forget the 'oops factor.' Wrong is wrong. Do it right. Vote again. "It happens everywhere" does not cut it for me. Crime happens everywhere. Disease happens everywhere. Cancer happens everywhere. Should we sit by quietly & wait to be victims?
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on May 23, 2005 12:18 PMFraud -- human error
Intentional -- mistake
illegal -- okay for democrats
2 wrongs -- right
accurate -- wild a**ed guess
dead -- not as final as we previously thought
count -- random number
audit -- verifying a random number, ie yep thats a number
This should help explain the dems position.
Posted by: JCM on May 23, 2005 12:23 PMThe GOP's lawyers need a wake-up call. Does anyone know their number?
Posted by: Micajah on May 23, 2005 12:33 PMKCE really set them selves up for this. Why cant they just get people to the office 3-4 hours early, have the number of ballots required by each precinct by the number of registered voters in that precinct packed in to bricks with a 10% overage of ballots to cover provisional and mismarked ballots, already set up to go to the various polling places by precinct number. Have one designated rep from that precinct pickup and sign for the EXACT amount of ballots. If during the day they find that they are running short of ballots send that rep to get more or have more sent out to them, and have them sign an addendum to the the original amount. After that polls close ALL ballots, even those that were never filled out, mistakenly marked...etc, along with the properly filled out ballots are brought to the counting station and the marred, unfilled out ballots are destroyed, witnessed and that destruction form is signed by the rep who signed for them, party reps (D and R), and a KCE official. That way you know just how many ballots were sent to each polling place, how many were used and how many were destroyed.
Sure it makes for a long day for the person who is designated, but I would do it.
Posted by: Frank on May 23, 2005 01:45 PM