The National Council of State Legislatures, meeting in Seattle this week, today has an afternoon break-out session on elections titled "Every Vote Counts"
History is filled with examples of elections decided by a handful of votes, sometimes by one vote. In 2004, several races, including the Washington governor's race, were decided by a fraction of a percentage point. How can states be sure statutes are adequate when the lightning bolt of a one-vote race strikes?Expert speaker: Dean Logan!
It's true. Under Dean Logan, every vote counts. Well, maybe not every vote.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 19, 2005 11:49 AM | Email ThisOnce again no mention of legal voters, legal ballots, legal certifications, accurate tallies or a clean election.
Dean "count 'em till our guy wins" Logan is the poster child for the "count every vote" crowd. He managed to count every vote plus a few extra and voila his gal won.
The fix starts with tossing Sims in Nov. There is no hope for a fix in KC or WA until the crowd currently "in" is "out."
Posted by: JCM on August 19, 2005 12:22 PMI kinda wonder what Bill Gates, one of the faces of this year's annual meeting, thinks about this whole mess.
Posted by: Gary on August 19, 2005 02:21 PMSome of these government types are so messed up, they don't even realize how 'off' they are!
Posted by: Realist on August 19, 2005 04:34 PMThe name of the session was picked by NCSL staff months ago. It was picked before the speakers were known. None of the speakers nor I were involved in picking the name (I wasn't asked to be the moderator until about a month before the conference). NCSL staff pick these "concurrent sessions" by brainstorming on what issues are "hot" (and nobody can deny this one is!) and then the NCSL executive committee chooses the best of those to present at the conference.
The point of the session was actually not well represented by the title (the title was unfortunate, and I didn't use it or address it at all in my remarks). If you read the subtext, you saw that the session was intended to address close elections, and to hear from people who had been involved in the most recent and infamous close election in the country. They weren't picked so much for "expertise" as for having been in the middle of the mess.
The speakers, in addition to myself (as moderator) and Dean Logan, were Secretary of State Sam Reed and Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy. Each of us spoke for about 10-15 minutes on our personal experiences surrounding last November's election (and I'd be happy to share my remarks with you all if Stefan wants to post them). We then took questions from the audience.
Most of those in the audience (of about 80 people) were out-of-state legislators or legislative staff, plus a few local media people such as Bernard Choi (KING-5 TV) and Ken Voegel (TNT). Bob Williams of Evergreen Freedom Foundation was also there, and he took the opportunity to ask a very tough question of Dean Logan.
Most of the out-of-state folks were interested in what measures Washington had taken to prevent such a disaster from happening again. We talked about the eleven election-related bills passed by the legislature during the 2005 session (and I made the point that many of our key proposed reforms were NOT enacted), and work remaining to be done (I made the point that our election contest statute, written mostly in 1881, is obsolete and doesn't adequately address today's technology and circumstances). Many of them left me their cards, asking to receive my summary of the legislation passed and not passed.
I received favorable comments afterward about the session; most of those in attendance seemed to think they had received useful information. The session wasn't intended to be a "Roast Sam and Dean" session nor a press conference; it probably would have been unsatisfying to most Sound Politics readers for not being used as more of an opportunity to raise tough issues and call people to account for serious mistakes. But that's about what you'd expect in a conference by legislators and for legislators (and staff).
Posted by: Rep. Toby Nixon on August 21, 2005 07:20 PMCan you please share what the tough question was and the response by Logan?
Thanks!
Please keep slogging for more election reform. We also need our right to vote at the polls back, thanks!
Posted by: sgmmac on August 21, 2005 09:09 PM