The Everett Herald reports on the frightfully lackadaisical attitude of Snohomish County Elections administrators: "County obliged to trust voters"
"It is the honor system, and that's what all elections in the state of Washington are based on," Diepenbrock said. "We believe in our voters. We believe they are telling the truth."Of course they are.
The Snohomish elections administrators protest that their hands are tied by the law --
Until the law is changed, local elections officials say they will continue to extend trust.The article doesn't mention this, but these people are working behind the scenes to prevent the law from changing. Diepenbrock's boss, County Auditor "Sideshow" Bob Terwilliger, was in Olympia on Friday lobbying against a bill that would make it possible for citizens to challenge flagrantly bogus registrations. [audio here, forward to 1:29:50].
If our state and county election officials simultaneously refuse to clean up the voter rolls themselves and only make it harder for citizens to challenge fraudulent voters, it's only fair to conclude that these officials actually want corrupt elections. They are systematically degrading electoral integrity to the point where "elections" are becoming little more than ballot stuffing contests where the officials have a monopoly on controlling the production of ballots.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 23, 2006 12:20 AM | Email This(R)s in the House and Senate introduced some good and substantive election reform bills during the 2005 session. If those efforts continue to be frustrated in 2006 by (D) insistance that they want to 'count' every vote, dead or alive, legal or illegal, it is relatively easy to download the needed language from the Legislature's web site, change 'Be it enacted by the Legislature' to 'Be it enacted by the People', and file it with the SOS.... getting enough signatures and enough legal voters to vote for it is of course the hard part.
Posted by: Methow Ken on January 23, 2006 09:47 AMI know of one dead man voting. Good friend, too (just joking on the last sentence). I hope he keeps trusting that the 'dead' man keeps voting Democrat, which he didn't.
Posted by: swatter on January 23, 2006 10:37 AMWhat incentive is there to change anything if the same corrupt, incompetent people keeping getting "elected" with the system currently in place? Why should they take a chance on anything different than what is already there? Why risk derailing the gravy train?
There you have the crux of the problem facing making elections in WA state legitimate, and why the admonition of Bridges to use the corrupt, broen system to fix the corrupt, broken system is so brainlessly inept and stupid. You can't expect reform when those in charge of elections that could implement that reform are corrupted by the power they hold. They aren't going to make any changes that they see as a possible threat to their stranglehold on power. Hoping for real reform with these 'Rats is a lost cause. It's going to take some kind of a "non-traditional", outside-the-box technique to cauterize the rot.
Posted by: Interested Observer on January 23, 2006 11:04 AMThe speaker was the Island County Auditor, if I recall correctly.
She stated that something very basic and necessary is missing from the new statutory requirement for a ballot reconciliation report.
It's missing any requirement to state the number of ballots received by the auditors. As she put it, she and her deputy recognized while getting ready for the certification that there was nothing in the law requiring them to state the number of ballots for which they must account. She stated that they both understood as auditors that the first requirement in any reconciliation effort is to determine how many ballots must be accounted for -- and, while that requirement was missing from the law, they went ahead and added it to their local certification process anyway so their ballot reconciliation report to the canvassing board would be an actual ballot reconciliation.
It took Kastama a little while to understand (or, at least, to make sounds as though he understood -- having obviously misunderstood her point on the first time through). He then stated that he expected the auditors' association to recommend needed amendments to make sure that there is a true audit and reconciliation of ballots received compared to ballots sent through vote tabulation and ballots rejected as invalidly cast.
I have found nothing so far to indicate that any auditor or auditors' association made any such recommendation, nor have I found anything indicating that any bill has been introduced.
Has anyone heard of any effort to require an actual ballot reconciliation before certifying election results?
Posted by: Micajah on January 23, 2006 11:39 AM