I spent another day poring over last November's absentee ballot envelopes. This time with the help of the best purchase I ever made -- a bar code scanner!
Sadly, the county's processing of absentee ballots is a total mess. After looking at 2,719 validated and opened envelopes and 1,200 rejected and still sealed envelopes so far, I've discovered a number of irregularities. No sane person who examines this mess would still have confidence in King County's "vote by mail" operation. And it's clear that the dysfunction is much more fundamental than the one absentee ballot supervisor who was scapegoated. Here are some of the notable findings --
1) 17 of the opened envelopes were found in batches that the "absentee ballot audit" file said they were not supposed to be in.
2) The "absentee ballot audit" file says there are 141 more open envelopes that are supposed to be in the batches I looked at that aren't in those batches. ((1) and (2) together give us an error rate of about 6%)
3) 17 people whose ballot envelopes were opened were not credited with voting.
4) 49 people whose ballots were rejected were credited with voting. Between 1/2 and 2/3 of these were rejected because they submitted multiple ballots. It's not clear yet if the others had also submitted a valid ballot.
5) The Mail Ballot Report that Garth Fell and Bill Huennekens signed off on is even more bogus than any of us realized.
And stay tuned for the upcoming post on the 36 overseas and service voters whose ballots were unlawfully rejected for late postmark!
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 08, 2005 06:41 PM | Email ThisCheck your tipjar. Thanks!
Posted by: Scott in Carnation on September 8, 2005 07:51 PMLogan surmised in his deposition that some of the excess of absentee ballots in the vote tabulation compared to the number of voters credited with voting in the computer system resulted from rushing during the last few days to meet the deadline for "certifying" the election.
His hypothesis seemed to be based on the idea that thousands of initially rejected ballots were later accepted when the purported voters submitted "updated" signatures after being notified of signature mismatches that caused the initial rejection. He guessed that many of those which were later accepted as valid were sent along to opening and tabulation, but that the DIMS computer record wasn't changed to remove the code for rejection and put in a notation crediting the voters with voting.
When were those 17 envelopes supposedly opened? Recognizing from your post that envelopes are apparently archived in batches to which they don't belong, is there any way of knowing when the verification and opening occurred?
Is there any hint that they were initially rejected and later accepted? Any rejection code available? Any indication that they were "rebatched" after being removed from their initial batches because of a signature mismatch?
I have wondered how many of the excess ballots in the vote tabulation resulted from sending invalid (i.e., rejected) ballots through. Is there any way to determine whether those 17 were rejected and never accepted as valid, but were sent to vote tabulation anyway?
Posted by: Micajah on September 8, 2005 07:54 PMA barcode scanner! Brilliant!
This is exactly how to get to the meat of this mess...Thorough and methodical examination.
I can't wait to see what more you've found!
Posted by: Deborah on September 8, 2005 08:01 PMThe Republicans think the knot is an ancient mystical valuable item, so they put it safely in a museum for all to see. No one is allowed to touch it nor study it. They irrationally fear its alleged power.
The Dems think it's the magical icon that ensures fertile elections for their side. They wave it around in their elections-fertility ceremonies. (Yes--secular ones.) Great bacchanals are held knowing the knot is never to be untied.
The voters are mystified--to them it appears to be just a frikkin knot in their shoelace preventing a decent fit and imparing their shoe from getting tied properly. The voters are thinking about cutting the damn thing off and buying (electing) a new lace.
The press is busy hunting down an unrelated item--why do we need shoelaces anyway? Let's all wear (mail-in) voting sandals or no shoes at all like the homeless and illegals? After all, we ALL have the same kind of feet, right?!
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on September 8, 2005 09:22 PM
On another note, anyone who wants to know how to get a cheap USB barcode scanner, check out the CueCat scanners on eBay. You can hack them to be generic scanners. They are not as good as trigger based scanners with mirrors, and lasers in that you have to manually swipe them, but they are about $5. Great for scanning and managing your book collection via the ISBN numbers. And for keeping Democrat ballot handling operations inline. Contact me if you need more info.
Posted by: Jeff B. on September 8, 2005 11:37 PMOh, but that's right. Humans are much more accurate, hence a hand recount...
Posted by: Brent on September 9, 2005 08:13 AMeasier to let someone ELSE do the heavy lifting and then shoot it apart; if i was an editor, i'd be chewing writers' arses like the Spiderman news boss! right on the Dems too--i'd be busy digging for defensive and counterattack materials if i was them--to see ALL exposures--just like any military operation; but not here;
Stefan--GREAT work--asking the unpopular questions ! Collective denial will kill us.
Prospective journalists (at the UW at least) must
1) Spend 4 years in college at a cost of 5-20 grand a year where you'll have a one in four chance of actually writing for the college student paper.
2) Of those students who are journalism/communication majors and who wrote for the Daily, only about five percent of them have a chance of landing at a real reporting gig.
2a) For all you Right Turn folks, don't even bother.
3) If you don't have the right sounding last name, don't even bother.
4) Those journalists lucky enough to get hired, most will languish at $8 to $12 an hour gigs at weeklies and small-dailies for 5-10 years until they start families and move into higher paying government PR work.
5) For those that hit the jackpot and land a job at Hearst's Post Intelligencer or the Times, you'll start out at around $18 an hour (circa 2000). But neither paper makes a habit of hiring local staffers on general, so don't bother applying there either.
So, with that to look forward to, I look forward to as many young journalists as possible to enter the profession who know how to write stories that are objective without any left (or right) leaning slant.
I love the commerical that was arring at the same time our soon to be former executive was bragging about how inept the county is where Bank of America says "Proccessing 1 billion checks correctly is about processing one correctly and repeating that process 1 billion times".
We are seeing this falls elections being set up to help Sims and Edmonds avoid defeat.
Posted by: Steven Pyeatt on September 9, 2005 01:39 PMhowever, when it takes people--without formal journalistic training--to pick up the battle flag of truth in place of those who supposedly LIVE for this--one has to wonder where the "fire in the belly" went in the journalistic industry--why sould we change our professions to help you lift the scoop-story loads?
why do people from other walks of life have to do the work of the investigative journalist? did you all ababdon your posts? maybe not; are you just following your captains' orders? perhaps yes;
that's why political blogs like this flourish--people step in to add their 2-cents--right or wrong, they are cutting into your job--nature abhors a vaccuum; think about it;
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on September 9, 2005 02:42 PMMy friend who recently moved here from grad school in California told me he received TWO ballots in the mail. Some staffperson must have done something right, because he received a phone call about it pretty quickly... but all they told him to do was "throw one of them in the trash."
That makes me feel real secure!
Posted by: Mickymse on September 9, 2005 03:28 PMYou're right in some regards and a mite wrong elsewhere but this post has gotten off topic. Will discuss what's wrong (and right) with the media later with ya if you want; it's a favorite topic of mine for some reason...
I can say, though, that folks like headless lucy and websites that cater to them are the reason why blogs will never fully catch up with traditional media outlets.
Now we find that it is back because school is back in session and it must have had a long hot unfulfilling summer break because it is now soliticing for sex on blog posts.
Is this really what we pay these educators to do in our public schools?????????
Posted by: sgmmac on September 10, 2005 07:03 AMthe "lucys" of the world are STILL responsible for their speech and actions--liberal blamelessness or not; so if they are judged accordingly, so be it! tuskie-schitskie
for most sensible people, the quality of crackpot comments automatically assigns them to the garage sale table of debates; no worries; thanks for the discussion offer; glad the press interests you; i just don't see the press 'fire' anymore--i suspect fear runs the pressrooms;
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on September 10, 2005 11:44 AMEdd "two d's" Key.
Hmmm. A staff of six? Tuition is $9,290. What kind of school is this? What a weird bio with his head under the circular saw.
Posted by: cc on September 10, 2005 11:40 PM#3 and #4 seem less serious -- didn't Logan claim that crediting is not an integral part of vote-counting?
I don't understand #5. Please elaborate.
Posted by: Bruce on September 11, 2005 12:00 PM