Watch for the rush to judgment

Today's P-I: "King County's vote counters still have a lot of work to do". Reporter Gregory Reborts quoted me, sort of:

The department has gotten better at balancing its electoral books since then. Even so, Stefan Sharkansky, the Seattle blogger who led the attack on the 2004 vote counting, is withholding judgment on the Nov. 7 effort until reconciliation is completed.

That's an interesting formulation. I wouldn't say that I "led the attack on the 2004 vote counting", although I am proud to have uncovered a lot of the problems. I did tell Greg last week that I'm withholding judgment until I can examine the reconciliation reports. But it's premature to declare that the department has gotten better at balancing its books. The procedures I observed last week show improvements, but the proof is not in the procedures but the actual reconciliation. The 2005 elections had serious reconciliation problems (remember the 390 missing ballots from the Primary which has never been explained?). This year's primary also had funky reconciliation problems. Unfortunately, it will take weeks for the Elections office to release all the data and a while more for me to analyze it. Now that there don't appear to be any real close races and potentially serious problems will be easier to overlook, expect Ron Sims and his minions to rush to declare that it was an unprecedented well-run election. You can also expect Sims' credulous fans in the liberal media to happily parrot whatever he puts in his press release. But I'll withhold judgment until I look at the actual facts.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at November 20, 2006 11:44 AM | Email This