This morning's reports by both Greg Roberts of the P-I and David Postman of the Times missed what is, in my opinion, the single most important bit of new information that has come out in the trial.
I'm referring to Nicole Way's response to one of Judge Bridges' questions about the Mail Ballot Report. I mentioned this in a post yesterday, but I'm repeating it because it is significant for a number of reasons:
Bridges: Had you prepared mail ballot reports before this general election last fall?The reasons this is so important are:Way: yes
Bridges: Did you use the same method to do that?
Way: Before we had a report that said how many ballots had been issued and how many voters had been credited with voting and then we compared that to how many ballots we tabulated and the handcount of the ballots that we did not count and we had a daily count of how many ballots we received. So we compared it with a number of different reports that we had reports that we verified our numbers against.
1) It demolishes the Democrats' spin that Way
"did not know for certain that the number in the report was inaccurate until March"Of course she did not know for certain that it was an inaccurate number, but only because she had no idea what the number should have been. What is important here is that she knew she was not using the only valid method for reconciliation -- using an independent count of the number of ballots received. Her response to the judge proved that she knew what the proper method was and that it was an achievable method and that she knew she was not using a valid method.
2) It undermines Dean Logan's claims that the number of absentee ballots received was always misreported.
3) It indicates that Judge Bridges is keenly interested in the details of the case and is aware of the significance of the falsified Mail Ballot Report.
I suspect that Judge Bridges will mention the Mail Ballot Report in his ruling and how election officials, at the very least, knew they were remiss by failing to uphold laws and established procedures for ensuring the integrity of the election.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 26, 2005 12:22 PM | Email ThisAll falling down like a burning house of cards, it'll be funny watching Goldy's face when the tyrant is de-throned.
Posted by: Adriel on May 26, 2005 12:28 PMBut reality does not go away. Way knew she was doing something different, and she knew the implications of what she was doing. This is why we have a justice system.
Posted by: Jeff B. on May 26, 2005 12:46 PMSomeone needs to make the distinction here between having the wrong number (ie arriving at the number in a wrong, misleading, false way), and having the wrong number (ie amount). Nicole didn't "know" the amount was wrong until March, because she had no positive proof until then. But she new when the report was written that the number on the line labeled "ballots recieved" (or whatever designation they gave it) was wrong when you consider that she knew the formula for figuring out that number should have been Ballots received = ballots counted as they were received in the mail room. Since she didn't have that number, she used a different formula, Ballots received = ballots tabulated + ballots rejected. She hoped that by coincidence the amounts of both numbers would be the same, and she discovered in March they weren't. But she knew all along she had the wrong formula in place, and therefore the wrong number.
Posted by: California Dreamer on May 26, 2005 01:07 PMI'm waiting for a Horsey cartoon on that.
Posted by: Dogbert on May 26, 2005 01:29 PM"Did you know that 47% of all statistics are false?" -- David Lowery
Posted by: Larry on May 26, 2005 01:32 PMWhat a concept!
Why aren't the FEDS investigating all of this?
Posted by: Mark on August 30, 2005 07:27 AM