The report on the trial from this morning's Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The King County absentee-ballot report, which is not required by state law, was provided to the county canvassing board before it certified the initial tabulation of the Nov. 2 vote.[emphasis added]
In fact, state law does require election officials to perform the ballot reconciliation that was falsified in the Mail Ballot Report: WAC 434-240-270
Each county auditor shall maintain an audit trail with respect to the processing of absentee ballots which shall include, but not be limited to, the following:Both Nicole Way and Bill Huennekens admitted that this reconciliation was never performed and that it cannot be performed because they have never known the number of absentee ballots received.
...
7) A reconciliation that all absentee ballots counted plus all absentee ballots rejected is equal to the total number of absentee ballots received.
UPDATE: Greg Roberts, who wrote the article replied:
Well...I read your email on this late Weds nite, and because I could not reach anyone from the secretary of state's office to check it out, I removed that phrase from late editions of the paper.That's a decent and commendable response. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 26, 2005 10:08 AM | Email ThisI have since checked with SoS representatives. They say that while an absentee ballot audit trail is required, the specific "absentee-ballot report....(that was) provided to the county canvassing board" is not required. Given that that is a fine distinction (albeit a legitimate one), I probably won't repeat the reference.
So, what should really be asked is, "Do the people of the state of WA FEEL that CG should be governor."
Then, if you asked the question in a survey, the Dems would say that they don't FEEL right or good about the sample, the model, or the results.
In the end, their argument would be that really what matters if whether CG FEELS that she should be governor or not.
She would say yes, and the supreme banana court would agree.
Posted by: DeadManVoting (aka Iguana) on May 26, 2005 10:18 AMLocate, close with, and destroy the enemy and all that.
Posted by: Aaron on May 26, 2005 10:18 AMNow, I'm *way* more inclined to believe Sharky, but damn, the slant that reporter took seemed to be extremely unrelated to what we see/read here.
I've gone and read the facts, I've seen the RCW's, I've read the depositions and I come to the same conclusion that resonates here.
How on *EARTH* can that report craft a story that make it seem like this is all a GOP tempest in a teapot? If we win that trial (and we should), the web of lies the PI has created will make their readers feel like they've been robbed by the court.
By not telling their readers the whole truth and letting them decide, they're being deceitful (I'd call them liars to their face).
What the heck is up with that?
Posted by: lee egg on May 26, 2005 10:24 AMEither Logan or his designee (or both) would have a reason to minimize the purpose of and requirement for the Mail Ballot Report and Provisional Ballot Summary Report -- both were false and thus not authentic information.
Note that when Huennekens was asked whether the board relied on the Mail Ballot Report in (almost but not quite) certifying the results, he claimed that it's just information that is traditionally provided to the board so they can see how the election was administered.
Gregory Roberts in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is simply parroting what he has heard from the Dems.
The question is whether the petitioners' lawyers know enough about the election laws to point the judge to the specific laws that refute the Dems' arguments. Have they asked the judge to take judicial notice of even one law yet? How will they make an argument based on the law if they don't?
Posted by: Micajah on May 26, 2005 10:30 AMMr. Roberts,
In your column “Lawyers pursue question of fraud in election case” dated 25 May 2005, you make the statement, “The King County absentee-ballot report, which is not required by state law, was provided to the county canvassing board before it certified the initial tabulation of the Nov. 2 vote.” The underlined section is a false statement, and basic perusal of pertinent Washington Administrative Code sections which are available online would have shown you that according to WAC 434-240-270:
WAC 434-240-270 Maintenance of an audit trail on absentee ballots. Each county auditor shall maintain an audit trail with respect to the processing of absentee ballots which shall include, but not be limited to, the following:
(1) A record of when each absentee ballot application was received, the date the ballot was mailed or issued, and the date the absentee ballot was received;
(2) The number of absentee ballots issued and returned, by legislative and congressional district, for each primary and general election;
(3) A record of the disposition of each request for an absentee ballot not honored;
(4) A record of the disposition of each returned absentee ballot not counted;
(5) A record of the time and place of each time the county canvassing board met to process absentee ballots;
(6) A documentation of the security procedures undertaken to protect the integrity of the ballots after receipt, including the seal numbers used to secure the ballots during all facets of the absentee ballot process;
(7) A reconciliation that all absentee ballots counted plus all absentee ballots rejected is equal to the total number of absentee ballots received.
[Statutory Authority: RCW 29.04.080, 29.04.210, 29.36.150 and 29.79.200. 97-21-045, recodified as § 434-240-270, filed 10/13/97, effective 11/13/97. Statutory Authority: RCW 29.36.150. 88-03-019 (Order 88-1), § 434-40-270, filed 1/12/88.]
I would like to ask the editors of the Seattle Post Intelligencer to publish a retraction of this section of the article.
Anyone wanna take bets on what happens or what form e-mail I recieve back?
The press just says anything it wants, anything at all. The only constraint is the credulity of its audience.
Posted by: Bostonian on May 26, 2005 10:41 AMI know they feel they can (and do) publish anything they want, regardless of the actual reality behind it, but what the heck to they expect to accomplish by this particular instance?
The judge will rule based on the evidence presented (hopefully).
The online comic Day By Day (http://daybydaycartoon.com/) from May 19th through the 21st have a pretty funny take on the MSM twisting the truth.
MSM is re no better than the supermarket tabloids. Worse actually, because you can at least laugh at the fabrications of the tabloids, the MSM lies just makes me mad.
Posted by: lee egg on May 26, 2005 11:01 AMDon't people usually go into journalism to "change the world" and "make a difference"?
Posted by: Bostonian on May 26, 2005 11:11 AMHe would ask me what happened in court that day, and I would summarize, and we'd generally agree. Then the next morning, we'd look in the "paper" (I hesitate to call it that because as they say in 'So I Married an Axe Murderer' - "The paper contains facts!"), and read their coverage of the trial.
Totally false. Many times almost the extreme opposite of what happened. Why? Because, everyone *knew* O.J. was guilty, just as these lame msm reporters today *know* that CG should be Governor, so facts don't matter.
Just for the record (flame away if you want), anyone I've met who actually watched the entire trial (like I did) agrees with the ruling. I'm still not sure if he was guilty or not, but there certainly wasn't enough evidence to make a convincing argument. Of course, the people who just saw "the chase" and the msm reports still *know* that he's as guilty as Huennekens looked the other day :)
Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.
Posted by: Scott on May 26, 2005 12:01 PMI'm sure all you who email him will get the same response, which begs the question: if Gregory Roberts is the reporter assigned to a legal case, and he doesn't understand the basics about legal institutions, definitions or election codes, shouldn't the P-I be providing him with some help in the form of an expert to proof-read his stuff? Or better yet, find a reporter on their staff who does have a bit of an understanding of legal issues?
I honestly think complaining about the P-I on their coverage is nothing but whistling in the dark at this point--they obviously just don't give a rat's *ss about accuracy.
Posted by: Marc on May 26, 2005 04:02 PMI agree with your principle but not with your case in point. I was off from work during the time so I watched the entire OJ trial as well. Even if one accepts the Mark Fuhrman racist red herring, the chain of custody argument, and the police conspiracy issue, the DNA evidence still proved OJ was guilty by its singular inductive strength. Nothing personal, but there was far more than the required burden of reasonable doubt, indeed there was near-virtual deductive certainty of his guilt, but racism and logrolling got in the way. Believing the police set O.J. up is like believing what Michael Moore says about 911 – tinfoil-hat style nonsense. The rats expect us to buy a similar farce.
In the current election trial, the partisan prejudice from the left is just as palpable as the racism from the left was in the O.J. trial. It would be more fun and make everyone (especially liberals) feel better to say that it was more complex than that, but it wasn’t. Johnny Cochrane supposed that we should believe that ignoring the obvious makes us thoughtful and even-handed because the goal is justice/equality. The problem is that the truth isn’t found through instances of alternate theories, but evidence of guilt. Facts obscured or ignored are still facts.
There was considerably more evidence to prove that O.J. was guilty of murdering Nicole Simpson and Ron Brown than there was evidence that we could land on the moon at the time Neal Armstrong stepped off the ladder. Nevertheless, Armstrong walked and so did OJ. Scott Peterson was convicted with far less convincing evidence of guilt than OJ, but Peterson was not a cultural pretty-boy with lots of money. It just so happens that in all of these instances the truth was staring us in the face, but a portion of American society wanted some and didn’t want others. Remember “Alice through the looking glass?” These cases were heavily influenced by emotions in substitution for facts, and I was not willing to accept a farcical conspiracy theory to obscure the fact that DNA evidence proved OJ was guilty well beyond any reasonable doubt.
My point is simple. Absent passion, in this election commotion what do we know?
Because of inevitable appellate review, the court must be careful to balance some competing interests, but it doesn’t have to abandon common sense. A clear and convincing burden or reasonable certainty is not a far different standard from reasonable doubt. I am not willing to pretend that a series of powerful inferences of misconduct along with admissions from some of the perpetrators are merely coincidental anomalies. Then again my idea of “reasonable” is obviously different from others.
Is it reasonable to believe that a group of Brentwood policemen, coroners, and forensic experts got together ad hoc and conspired to form a meticulous plan to distribute blood evidence and gloves to frame OJ? Is it reasonable to assume that Democrats – when given carte blanche to do so would not lie, cheat, and steal to change the outcome of an election? Which will we believe, the democrats hysterical ranting or the admissions under oath of their own elections people? This election was stolen well beyond any reasonable doubt.
Look, my point was just that you absolutely CANNOT trust what you read in the paper. Period. And regardless of your own conclusions of guilt or innocence, you must admit that the msm reporting on the case ranged from poor to outright false at times.
The OJ trial is totally different, and there's no falsified documents and forms that were put into a machine which weren't supposed to, etc. It's like apples and oranges, but anyway, no, I didn't buy the whole big conspiracy theory. I do remember that a couple of the things did seem fishy.
And as for the DNA evidence, I remember that being one of their weak points, honestly. What was it? They found a trace of his own blood in his own car?? Yeah, that's REAL telling...there's probably some of my blood in my car from previous nicks/cuts. Plus I seem to recall that they lost some of his blood they took as a sample, with no record of where it went. Now, arguing as they did that they used it to frame him is a tough argument to make, but the whole thing just reeks. How did they "lose" some of his blood sample, and then they found his blood some time after the sample was taken?
But, I'll acknowledge that my memory of it is fuzzy. The glove was hilarious though. That broke the prosecutor's case as far as I could tell. OJ has BIG hands. Don't you think the defense (and OJ) would be totally and completely against him putting on the "murder glove" in front of the jury!? And would object 10 times more than Durkan?
You can talk about shrinkage all you want, but that thing just wasn't going to fit. I especially loved all the reports of how he was just "acting"....yeah, RIGHT!!! You did SEE the "Naked Gun" movies, didn't you??? That pretty firmly establishes that OJ can't act....
Anyway, my further 2 cents that is really off topic... :)
Posted by: Scott on May 27, 2005 11:54 AMIt is OT but . . somewhat germane. I appreciate and take your point. I would not belabor the point but to me this is quite important. Obviously we could sit over a beer and discuss the OJ trial and both come away knowing more than we started with. Opinions are opinions, but how we arrive at them can mean a lot depending on the situation.
Only if one believes that a group of Brentwood policemen and detectives, coroners, including the forensic experts got together ad hoc and conspired through a meticulous plan to frame OJ, concocting tainted DNA evidence could you conclude he was not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Even then you will be left wholly unsatisfied.
It was not just OJ’s blood found that was the issue. DNA was the strongest evidence. Supposedly how it was gathered and handled was the weakness. Blood evidence was proven by conclusive DNA (some several hundreds of millions to one) to be to be OJ's blood mixed with blood variously from Nicole and Ron Brown. Samples were found on carpet in OJ's bedroom, in several dozen locations in the entry way where the murder took place, on the entry gate to the entry way, and on the side of and inside OJ's car as well as on the gloves. For this conspiracy to occur, these conspirators would have been forced to precisely reconstruct the whole murder scene by obtaining and creating various admixtures of blood and placing it in numerous locations before the first investigating officers arrived at the scene. The problems with this plan B are far too complex to consider reasonably believable.
The gloves farce was the easiest part. I could easily simulate the ludicrous non fitting gloves act any time for you. I am the same height and weight of OJ and my hands are large like OJ's and I must force any gloves that fit me to go on in the same fashion as OJ posed in court to show they were too small. I am reminded of this every time I put gloves on. Not credible, however quite silly. Still, a lot of people bought it. Not me. I would bet you big bucks that if we were able to surreptitiously watch OJ put golf gloves on he would struggle exactly as he did in court before pulling them all of the way on.
The evidence was never misplaced nor was the chain of custody broken, nor was there any evidence that either occurred, only a slight negative inference. One forensic pathologist left some of the evidence locked in the trunk of his car over night. The only way to conclude that this was indicia of broken custody is if you believe that the official was part of the conspiracy. To believe this was a conspiracy is to believe that the conspirators are at once – both smart and organized enough to cobble up a near perfect frame on the fly – and at the same time stupid enough to allow one of their conspirators to point the finger at themselves (sound familiar re KC elections?).
All of this also forces one to simply ignore a hopeless huge number of circumstantial inferences of his guilt. There was considerably more circumstantial evidence that OJ murdered his victims than that Scott Peterson murdered his wife and son. Motive, proximity to evidence, timing, subsequent actions all point directly to OJ. Scott Peterson is not black and he has no money, or there could easily have been the same outrage in his case.
Think about it – who supposedly actually murdered Nicole Simpson and Ron Brown – the mob?
THE FACT IS THAT IF YOU BELIEVE IN THE ACCURACY OF DNA ANALYSIS, AND NOT THE TOOTH FAIRY, YOU MUST CONCLUDE THAT OJ MURDERED NICOLE SIMPSON AND RON BROWN
Most people’s oversensitive desire to be fair to black people and to be persuaded that justice comes from emotional inferences rather than facts acquitted OJ. I believed in him until it became too difficult to accept the overwhelming evidence of his guilt.
Nevertheless, I agree "that you absolutely CANNOT trust what you read in the paper. Period. And regardless of your own conclusions of guilt or innocence, you must admit that the msm reporting on the case ranged from poor to outright false at times.
I believe that the OJ trial combined with the Clinton Administration started the collapse of the left. Everything became this careless maddening preposterous rational disconnect of bu22$hit versus from reality that was – to me – at first perplexing, then immensely infuriating, and now more amusing than anything else. In college I loved “critical thinking,” and I think we are all living in the era of “Alice through the looking glass.”
No disrespect intended, but with regard to the MSM, I agree whole heartedly, re OJ, not.
Thanks for your comments.