"Patterico" reacts to Stefan's interview with John McKay. Here's Patterico's summary:
So you have a U.S. Attorney who thought the election stank, but still waited for a confession or an informant before investigating — and consequently was unable to uncover hundreds of illegal votes that a single blogger managed to uncover in his spare time, with public records act requests. Then he announces to the press that there was "no evidence" of voter fraud.
Pathetic. Simply pathetic. He didn't deserve to keep his job.
As many of you may know, Patterico is a prosecutor himself, so his evaluation has extra weight.
Posted by Jim Miller at May 24, 2007 06:46 PM | Email ThisIf McKay wanted an informant or evidence from the inside of King County Elections department, perhaps authorizing the FBI to interview employees and volunteers in that election would have provided the evidence that McKay claims he wanted.
The fact that he declined to investigate that election, appears to this citizen to be fairly strong evidence that McKay was, in fact, not interested in learning the truth, and more than happy to help the Democrats, along with some RINOs, sweep all the election ugliness under the carpet.
I am also extremely grateful to Stefan for his efforts to expose and document evidence in this real scandal, and I continue to be amazed that the real stealing of an election can be buried indefinitely.
Posted by: MJC on May 24, 2007 07:42 PMIn the case of the 2004 election there were votes counted that should not have been. However there was zero evidence that it was anything other then a mistake. No evidence of fraud, no evidence of tampering, no evidence of anything but the sort of mistakes endemic to any human undertaking.
Errors do not equal crimes.
Posted by: Giffy on May 24, 2007 08:01 PMafterall the ends justify the means.
Posted by: daveo on May 24, 2007 08:20 PMLies can be evidence of wrongdoing. Say for example you go "missing" for three days, then miraculously appear at home after an extensive search and rescue operation failed to locate you in the place you said you were...and you're in perfect condition...except you can't remember much of anything. Now, one explanation that might raise an eyebrow is that you went running, you slipped, fell, bumped your head and and slept under a log for that entire time...
In this hypothetical, there appears to be circumstantial evidence that things are not as you say (e.g, no injuries; unlikeliness of survivng outside for that time under those conditions; absurdity of 'memory loss' from a bump on the head -- I seem to recall that was Episode 21 of Gilligan's island where the Skipper smacked Gillligan on the noggin' and Mary Ann and Ginger spent the rest of the show trying to convince lil' buddy who he was, UNTIL by pure chance Gilligan got bumped on the head again by a falling coconut, restoring his memory instantly). Hence, under this far fetched hypothetical, further investigation might be warranted if you were curious as to what really happened.
This is just a long-winded way to illlustrate that lies can be circumstantial evidence of wrong doing --- so I am curious which election officials are alleged to have lied and what the lies are about...and did McCay have evidence of those alleged lies at the time of his investigation?
Posted by: seanod100 on May 24, 2007 08:45 PMCrime uncovered!
The prosecution begins when?
Fredo? Rove? Sampson?
Still waiting.....
Posted by: observer on May 24, 2007 08:57 PMBizarre comment, at best. What felony? Care to cite some law that was broken?
Good luck with that, since (almost) NOTHING this administration has done has been strictly speaking illegal. A few "A-legal" things, perhaps...
Just to let you know: When we caught Nazi "unlawful combatants", we interrogated and then killed them. So I guess it's okay when we kill white males, but not when it's Arabs. Who we're housing. And feeding. And grooming. And providing worship materials for. And not beheading on the internet.
As far as killing enemies, we appear to be doing our best to only create more of them. Last time I checked, Osama, and his buddy Al Zawahiri was making videos.
To combat terrorists, first you would need a president with a brain.
Posted by: observer on May 25, 2007 04:42 AMYeah, that's why we didn't get Bin Laden the half-dozen times or so when we could have when Clinton was in office. Here's a guy who didn't know what the definition of 'is' is. We sure wouldn't have got him if the Goron were in office. Goron has 'no controlling legal authority' and thinks that e pluribus unum means "out of one, many". And you guys think Bush is stupid? Sheesh....
Posted by: Interested Observer on May 25, 2007 05:55 AMYou seem to forget during the heat of the count of how the election officials (en masse) went out of their way under protest from attorney and other election experts to count votes that shouldn't have been counted.
Let's not forget that, eh?
Posted by: swatter on May 25, 2007 07:05 AMI am not willing to mine for the links where this was discussed, but I wonder if falsified reconciliation reports constitute lying? They knew that their numbers did not add up, but they claimed that they did so that they could avoid the scrutiny of their errors. But if the problem was more than errors, and they were willing to lie on official reports, were they willing to lie about other procedures that were broken, ignored or skirted? Would those "errors" have allowed for purposeful padding of votes to help sway an election that was known to be razor-thin close at the time they were falsifying official documents?
Posted by: Eyago on May 25, 2007 08:28 AMThe report gives a number for the total of absentee ballots that were sent in by voters for tallying. But that total, Way testified, was not generated independently from records of ballots coming in; instead, it was simply the sum of ballots counted and ballots rejected.
Foreman pounced on that in his opening argument, placing the report at the center of the Republican fraud claims.
The Republicans have read aloud from depositions by Secretary of State Sam Reed to underscore the importance of recording incoming ballots to guard against votes being added or subtracted during processsing. And they pointed yesterday to Way's statement in her deposition that the ballots-returned total was not accurate."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/225860_election25ww.html
There are alot of us out here who would still like to see where Stefan's research will go - there is definitely smoke and where there's smoke, there is fire. I remember the buzzword "distributed vote fraud" in 2005 and to that I say fraud is fraud.
I encourage Stefan and other interested parties with some clout to follow up and approach McKay's successor and also the FBI, to see a rightful investigation ensue. Could you supply us with any updates on this and if you can use some financial backing - show the tip jar.
Posted by: KS on May 26, 2007 09:33 AM