But they don't give us any reason to believe that it will be "done right"

King County Council Chairman Larry Phillips has a guest op-ed in today's Seattle Times: "Done right, vote-by-mail will improve county elections". The flip side is that "Done wrong, vote-by-mail will cause the wrong people to get 'elected'". One can only assume that the Sims/Phillips cabal will manage vote-by-mail with the same honesty and integrity we're accustomed to seeing from them, as displayed, for example, in today's op-ed. After the jump are some of the more outlandish examples of distortions, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods in Phillips' op-ed.

[If you happen to be a "permanent absentee voter" and are fed up with being lied to by these people who are trying to force unreliable mail-voting on us solely for their own partisan purposes -- you can, for now at least, change your registration to vote at the polls again. Just fill out this form and return it to King County Elections, by mail to the address at the upper right or by fax to the number at lower right.]

From Phillips op-ed --

we have much preparation work ahead to ensure a smooth transition

Actually that's the only really truthful statement in the whole op-ed. Unfortunately, what Phillips doesn't say is that nobody knows yet what is involved in the "much preparation", or what it's going to cost, because they don't have a plan.

We required that the King County Department of Records, Elections and Licensing Services implement an electronic tracking system that will allow voters to use the Internet to verify that their votes are properly handled and counted. This tracking system will give each voter the peace of mind that her or his mailed ballot will reach its destination safely.

Unfortunately, as Deanron acknowledged in his testimony to the Council last month, no such tracking technology is available yet, and nobody knows when it might be available, how well it will work, or how much it will cost.

Voting centers will be distributed geographically throughout the county

The legislation does not specify anything about the locations or accessibility of the "voting centers".

Logan is leaving the records and elections department more stable than it has been in years

Only in the sense that it has hit bottom and can't possibly get any worse.

I welcome the opportunity to build on that momentum and urge King County Executive Ron Sims to bring the council a candidate who is a proven elections professional and a strong manager capable of taking King County elections to the next level.

Sims' last two elections directors -- Bob Roegner and Dean Logan -- were phenomenal disasters. Does any sane person trust Sims to do a better job on the third try?

"As the public holds the elections section more accountable, there is a related responsibility to simplify the inherently complex election process."

Yes, but processing mail ballots is far more complicated than processing polling place ballots and there are many, many more ways for things to go wrong.

70 to 80 percent in recent elections -- are choosing to cast their votes from the comfort of their homes.

Only in low-turnout local elections. In the 2004 presidential election, 63% voted at the polls, many more turned in mail ballots at a neighborhood polling place and more people voted at the polls in November 2004 than voted at all in, say, the 2005 primary.

For those who worry about the important issue of ballot security, simplifying the process and focusing security measures on one system will improve the integrity of our elections and limit the dependency on human interaction and ballot handling.

Voting by mail entails much more human interaction and ballot handling than voting at the polls -- mail ballots are handled by the post office (twice), possibly picked out of mailboxes by relatives or strangers, signatures are "verified" by hand and the ballots are tabulated and remarked by Teamsters.

It is unfortunate that in this county, discussions about vote-by-mail and other improvements to our election system continue to be hampered by partisan rancor and citizen extremists.

That is a disgraceful assault on the ordinary citizens from a broad range of political perspective who care enough about elections integrity to question the elections office and raise issues about its performance.

I'm proud that this council as a body exercised its policy oversight to help turn around our elections system

The Council Democrats' oversight has been a joke. They approved the vote-by-mail concept even though Deanron does not have a plan for implementing it. (I recently made a records request to the Council to see whatever "vote-by-mail plan" they received from the Executive. I will post all the documents in a later entry. Suffice to say that the documents they sent me do not constitute a remotely fleshed-out plan).

The council has taken more than a dozen legislative actions over the past three years to reform and improve the performance of the Department of Records, Elections and Licensing Services -- the majority approved with bipartisan support In each instance, the legislation was met with concurrence by Logan and signed by Sims.

The same is true with vote-by-mail.

The latter part about being signed by Sims is "true with vote-by-mail", not the part about "bipartisan support"

We have engaged our citizens to advise us and make meaningful recommendations,

Every single one of the citizens who testified to the Council about vote-by-mail was against the proposal.

we have brought in independent national experts.

That would be the $300,000 fraudulent audit team that couldn't find any evidence of fraud because they refused to look at what was offered to them.

We have done our job and will continue to do so

Only by defining "our job" as serving the Democrat Party bosses who believe that stuffing the county's mailboxes with unsolicited ballots will produce enough extra funny votes to to boost the chances of candidates whom they fear couldn't win in a clean election.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 13, 2006 01:23 PM | Email This