Today is Dean Logan's last day as King County's Director of Records, Elections and Licensing Services Division.
(In case you need a refresher course on Dean Logan, you can start here)
Logan becomes the No. 2 elections official in Los Angeles County, California, working under registrar-recorder/county clerk, Conny McCormack. McCormack spoke to the Seattle press on Logan's behalf in early 2005 when Logan was under fire for having counted more votes than voters in the bungled 2004 election. Unfortunately, McCormack's statements to the press were not truthful. She claimed that the discrepancy between votes and voters was meaningless. In fact, much of the discrepancy was the result of doubly counted votes and votes from unregistered voters, which were discovered in election records that had been improperly withheld from the public and not released until months after the contest trial. To the people of California: if you care about the integrity of your elections, keep a close eye on the L.A. County elections office.
As a going away tribute to Deanron ("Dean+Ron were to elections accounting as Enron was to corporate accounting"), I present a table of the mostly ineligible fatal pend ballots that Deanron counted in November 2004 -- The Museum of Questionable Ballots
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at July 14, 2006 12:38 PM | Email ThisI plan to move this fall as well, leaving Ron Sims and the inept, wasteful corrupt county named King behind.
Posted by: Gary on July 14, 2006 01:32 PMI've also sold my Redmond home and am shopping outside of KC. Problem is- KC is so large that they can control the entire states elections. So when KC fudges an election, the whole state get to grab their ankles. So long Dean, hope some car jacker caps your a$$ before you can f-up another state.
Posted by: Jeffro on July 14, 2006 01:46 PMKC is a lost cause and as soon as we can afford to move we are out of this sewage pit too. At this point probably out of WA all together.
Assuming, of course, they don't jack up taxes to delay us again, last time(s?) is costing us about an extra $100/mo this year and being disabled that hurts (we *are* grabbing our ankles)!.
No hope at all for any other option since they have the judiciary in their pockets as well.
/depressing on top of disgusting situation.
Posted by: Fox3 on July 14, 2006 02:16 PMI wish you the best of luck, friend. I hear Idaho is nice. That's where I would go if my family and daughter weren't so firmly planted here.
Posted by: Jeffro on July 14, 2006 02:32 PMas for just picking up & moving out of WA, I'd love to, but we all can't as easily; so--do we just sit here and be victims & accept the pols' ever-encroaching dicta; or do we fight back, even in little manners like being squeaky wheels or stones in shoes? i choose to fight; even if it's a non-effective stink joke-bom;
Posted by: Jimmie-howya-doin on July 14, 2006 03:08 PMStill plenty of fight in me, just moving my HQ (so to speak). My Redmond/KC/state property taxes were adding $450/month to my house payment. I'd like to lower that by a couple hundred.
I'd love to cause some trouble at one of these "drinking liberally" functions.
Difference between libs and us, we can enjoy drinking among friends - they can't even drink without being pouty, whining victims.
Posted by: Jeffro on July 14, 2006 03:28 PMSorry, just a bit of LA County reference and sarcasm in there. I wish him no harm - God help LA.
Posted by: Jeffro on July 14, 2006 03:32 PMPS: Hope an Major Earthquake doesn't bother your style too much!
Posted by: GS on July 14, 2006 10:29 PMNow that the recount debacle is almost two years behind us, it would be nice to focus on the future as in the upcoming November election and, maybe, 2008.
Posted by: Reporterward on July 15, 2006 12:56 AMHopefully, Mr. Logan's successor will have the good sense to follow the law, and ignore the unsatisfiable harpies whose true complaint is that King County's overwhelmingly liberal voters get our ballots counted.
Posted by: Paddy Mac on July 16, 2006 03:50 PMThey sure did, some probably several times over. Especially after the KC slimemolds kept "finding" so-called "lost" ballots what, nine or so separate times, or whatever it took to get Fraudoire selected.
Got any proof of that? And why come down so hard just on King County, when other counties found larger (on a per-voter basis) numbers of ballots? The laws dictate the period of time in which ballots may be found, not the ultimate number of ballots.
If you ascribe a criminal motive to King County's elections officials, then you need to read Judge Bridges' ruling again. He stated it all pretty plainly.
No thanks. Been there, done that, and I don't need to waste any more of my time. Someone who says that the voters "have the power" to fix a broken, corrupt elections system by using that same broken, corrupt elections system proves himself to be more of a brainless idiot than a judge. You show me an election for Governor in SayWA in 2004 that didn't involve "just happening" to find so-called "lost" ballots in a heavily 'Rat county nine separate times that tipped a crooked election to the lousy 'Rat candidate after three counts, then I'll be more inclined to believe you ran an honest election. Until then, take your Fraudoire and a big dose of STFU and go away.
Posted by: Interested Observer on July 18, 2006 06:03 AMAs for your obscenity-laced suggestion that I not use my rights, I always ignore profane rhetoric. Orwell wrote that freedom means saying two plus two equals four; I use my freedom to say zero plus zero equals zero. Zero evidence of systematic fraud, plus zero evidence of official wrongdoing, equals zero reasons to void the election. You can multiply that zero as many times as you wish, and I'll happily say that you've got just a big, fat nothing to show for your efforts.
Posted by: Paddy Mac on July 18, 2006 08:02 PMJust because they didn't find the Murder Weapon, doesn't mean the murder didn't happen. The Judge can only rule on what was Presented to the court at the time of his ruling....
Ironically, most of the evidence of "screwup's" and/or "fraud" was hidden away until after the trial. It doesn't mean it didn't happen, just means that the Judge couldn't rule on it....
I think KCE will never heal from this fiasco until there is an elected auditor who is solely responsible to the voters and not to King Sims.
Using your analogy, 35 of the 39 counties in this state have elected Auditors, and so should KC.
Posted by: Chris on July 19, 2006 06:35 AMA person can die without foul play, and the prosecution would have a hard time proving murder without a weapon, motive, or other evidence that a crime had happened.
The plaintiffs spent six months, and millions of dollars of other people's money, collecting evidence. We know that the Building Industry Association of Washington, a major donor to the plaintiffs' party, did try to collect evidence on felons. We know that credible evidence on felons' voting was presented to the court. It just so happened that none of the evidence so presented showed that the wrong person had been recognized as winner of the election.
The plaintiffs' attorney, Mr. Foreman, claimed to have evidence of fraud. The plaintiffs presented absolutely no evidence of fraud. Either Mr. Foreman lied to the judge, or he really had no idea of what evidence his team possessed. I don't know which way makes him look more foolish.
Any wrongdoing by elections officials must have happened right under the noses of a very large number of observers, many of whom had worked to elect Mr. Rossi. We assume that any such person would have made any problem clear.
"Ironically, most of the evidence of "screwup's" and/or "fraud" was hidden away until after the trial. It doesn't mean it didn't happen, just means that the Judge couldn't rule on it...."
Judge Bridges had harsh criticism for King County's performance, but noted that all elections have problems. We have no reason to believe that any of the problems affected the outcome of the election. Now, if Mr. Rossi had retained his lead (by King County not finding most of the ballots that they had misplaced), and we then discovered that felons had voted for him in large numbers, we might have cause to void the election. (I doubt that even that would suffice.)
"Using your analogy, 35 of the 39 counties in this state have elected Auditors, and so should KC."
Other counties, with elected auditors, had larger per-voter discoveries of errors during the recount. We focused on King County because the plaintiffs did NOT want to examine the entire state's elections process; they wanted to delete some votes from King County. They did not care about the integrity of our elections; they wanted a victory, however they could get it-- evidence or no. Judge Bridges described their request as one for "judicial activism."
"I think KCE will never heal from this fiasco until there is an elected auditor who is solely responsible to the voters and not to King Sims."
KCE will heal a lot faster if people on this site stop repeating groundless claims.
I actually work for the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County clerk and am happy to say that we spend a lot of time and money to make sure each election is fair and equal. It is unfortunate that the Democrats in Florida fscked up their own ballet to such a way that Governor Bush was able to pull off a marginal win over VP Gore. For those of you thinking that the Registrars had anything to do with the win, you must also be believing in aliens frozen at Groom Lake, NV.
I'm sure Conny has selected Dean because she feels he's going to be an asset to our County and organization. I certainly hope he is a good fit. If not, then he'll be on his way. I'll be the first to rally a cry against him. Until I hear otherwise, however, he's got my support.
From what I've read in the news, it appears your county - along with others in Washington - is having troubles which reach far beyond the scope of one individual. Clashes with the board, extremists on both sides, and an intense scrutiny of the electoral system are all factors in your problems. Not just Dean.
Keep in mind that the problem with the elections in California, Washington and the nation as a whole belongs to the people. Look who ran for president in '04 – an incompetent drunk incumbent versus a waffling 60's wannabe. Neither person was a choice most of the country wanted to have. In order to fix the elections, we need to have good candidates running on solid issues and try to get the people back.
Here in LA County, our June primary brought in only around 30% of the eligible voters. The fact that 70% of voters chose not to cast ballots is far more damaging to democracy than anything a single registrar officer can accomplish.
Posted by: Betty Bangzer on July 19, 2006 09:30 PM