Deanron sent this letter to the King County Republican Party asking the GOP to submit a list of observers for the May 16th election. The deadline for submitting the list is yesterday, May 1. Only problem -- the letter, which was dated April 26th, was postmarked on April 27th and wasn't received until May 1. Oh, well. Not that "election" "observers" are much of a check on the Teamsters and partisan Democrats who "count" every "vote" at their own discretion no matter who's watching.

Meanwhile, the County Council has decided to make the "Citizen"'s "Election" "Oversight" Committee a permanent fixture in the perpetual process of papering over elections problems. Last year's incarnation of the CEOC, dominated by government insiders, failed to make any meaningful progress on its mission to investigate the 2004 election fiasco and minimized the extent of various problems. Tim Borders, who served on the CEOC, e-mailed some deservedly harsh criticism of the group's final report --

1. I disagree with certain conclusions reached by the CEOC as a whole, or
conclusions cited in the executive summary. For example, I strongly
disagree with the proposal to force all poll voters to vote by mail.
There will be no reduction in complexity, due to HAVA requirements for
regional polling centers--thus, we will always have a dual system, but
the default will be to send all voters a costly mail-in-ballot, with
attendant security implications (unlike mail ballots, no poll ballots are
ever in the possession of private contractors, and no poll ballots are
outside the control of election personnel after the polls open on
election day). Furthermore, with VBM, there will be no reduction in cost.
Turnout will not increase over the long run, and we will lose the
institutional knowledge and capacity to conduct polling place elections.

2. I agree with the need for an elected auditor. I trust the citizens of
our county to elect the best qualified auditor for the job, who can be
voted out or even recalled from office if necessary, or rewarded with
extensions every four years.

3. Unfortunately, I do not have confidence in Dean Logan's ability to run
the election office impartially. I have personally witnessed several
glaring examples of partisan bias. I also have doubts about his ability
to run the office competently. Many errors never make the headlines, such
as the breach of voter secrecy of most provisional voters in the 2005
primary election. (75 percent of provisional voters in the 2005 primary
can be identified by party choice on the ballot due to a overly detailed
report posted on the web.)

4. The CEOC was asked to investigate the 2004 general election, but it
failed to do this while I served on the committee (it should be noted
that I was the most junior member). Several attempts to investigate the
2004 general election by Mike Sheridan and I were thwarted in committee.

5. The brevity of the report leaves a wrong impression, and seemingly
minimizes the full extent of problems in a number of areas, notably
registration issues.