Ho-hum… Chris Vance is alleging fraud again. At a press conference yesterday, the GOPolitburo Chair put forth the following curious piece of logic:
“If the books don’t balance and you can’t figure out why, you have to assume fraud took place.”
Um… no, Chris… if the books don’t balance you have to assume that the books don’t balance. If you’re going to allege that Democrats stuffed ballot boxes (which is what he’s doing,) you’re going to have to find some actual evidence of Democrats, uh… stuffing ballot boxes. At least if you plan on winning in court.
In fact, part of Vance’s fraud claim is based on an alleged 875 vote “discrepancy” between the absentee ballots counted and the number of voters credited. But Judge Bridges has already ruled that the voter credited records would not be accepted as evidence of ballots cast, so really, all Vance is doing is talking. This is all old news, being rehashed in a press conference, in the hope of stirring up a little voter outrage.
Vance is essentially accusing Democrats of being criminals, without any evidence to back up the claim. Well I’ll tell you what: I’m a Democrat, and I’m not a criminal, and I resent being called one. On the other hand, while I certainly wouldn’t want to generalize about all Republicans, I think I have collected ample enough evidence to definitively state that Chris Vance is an asshole.
beyond the ridiculousness of Vance’s claims on their face, this makes no sense at all. The causes for contest had to be spelled out in the filings for the suit, did they not? No causes for fraud were filed, to my knowledge. So what exactly do they plan to do to bring up these entirely new allegations? Putting aside the utter lack of evidentiary worth of them, how do they plan to bring new causes of contest into things 4 months after the deadline to do so?
Vance is in love with his name and his words in the press. If he does not have anything of value to say, he will just spew the usual unfounded garbage. Much like the extremists in DC. Sad state of affairs for a once upon a time “Grand Ole Party”
There’s enough evidence in this blog to show that Goldy, is the asshole.
Fraud?
No.
Were the democrats able to continue, Counting and recounting until they got the results thay wanted?
Absolutely.
Is King County Elections to blame?
Yep.
Should Logan be fired?
Yep.
Vance should be shown the door by republicans. After yelling “fraud” out of the shoot, the entire body of evidence (which was collected after TONS of effort by republicans to find anything/everything) resulted in nothing remotely close to fraud so they removed it from the suit.
Now, he resurrects it.
Actually, better for the Republicans to keep Vance. His inanity serves non-republicans just fine…
prr @4: They counted and recounted the exact number of times that the law provides. Too bad for Rossi he lost. Just the way the voters voted.
OH wait, are you talking about Florida? There’s the place the votes *weren’t* counted because, well we know, Gore would have been president.
Goldy,
Repubs didn’t take it personally when Nixon lied/left office. Slamming the party doesn’t mean all are guilty.
The “its old news” line reminds me of the Clinton spin doctors. I think its the heart of this matter, that ballots cast exceeds voters? How can you explain that? Elvis, Martians came and messed up the numbers? Naw, only logical explanation is some combo of ballot stuffing and/or 3rd world no recordkeeping system employed by KC. Either way the election doesn’t stand.
Again, how can you have more ballots than voters?
I’ll save the “extra ballots taken home by poll workers” angle for later :)
Thomas @ 6
Humpty dumpty was pushed too……
BTW, how’s that Kennedy assisination conspiracy theory going these days?
“Vance said that could change. “We believe that the existence of the discrepancy is evidence of fraud.”
There you go – FRAUD. Time for dean Logan to go to jail.
pbj, and we believe that Galloway said the absolute truth and maybe the entire nation will start understanding that the invasion of Iraq was just sour grapes and payback for daddy Bush. An invasion preconceived with lies fabricated to generate anxiety on the ‘normal’ American Citizen (normal probably means not including you)
Vance is clearly starting to lose support at (u)SP.com as the sinking feeling of defeat has started to set in and the rabble is looking for someone to blame. The Fall of Chris Vance looks like it will be ugly.
Who cares if there was fraud or not? As long as your guy wins it doesn’t matter how he/she wins. The republicans have made that clear over the past 10 or so years. The Dem’s start to play their games and the republifuks get their panties in a bunch! LOL what a bunch of idiots.
I also think it’s hillarious that the republifuks like to see how many votes they can’t count and then they talk about spreading democracy around the world. Sure they’ll count your votes as long as you’re not gay, black, mexican, non christian ect. What a bunch of jokers.
herbalizer…
Okay, I’ll bite.
Support your statement that minorities do not have equal rights in this country.
What an absolute load of shit.
Herbalizer; you using the marijuanizer today?
Repubs rigging the books? Where? Oh lemme guess, Florida in 2000 when the courts stopped the after the fact extra counting (darn those rules), then Ohio 2004 when you flat out lost.
You guys invented election fraud. How you think we got JFK in 1960 and no doubt tons of others…
Poor Maria Cantwell is tarred now by the close race w/ Gorton; without facts most of us doubt she really won that, after seeing the vote system at work this go around.
Back to my coffee; enjoy your buds
Poor Maria Cantwell is tarred now by the close race w/ Gorton; without facts most of us doubt she really won that, after seeing the vote system at work this go around.
Oh no. She beat Gorton.
Erik and all
How do you know she won? Nobody knows how many ballots or voters we have. Maybe a bunch of absentee ballots showed up (after going home for the weekend w/ the poll workers) and got counted
The “king county guessed at count” was a 2,000 vote diff.
“How do you know she won?”
Because she is called Senator Cantwell.
As Goldy points out, a bookkeeping discrepancy is evidence only of a bookkeeping discrepancy. Vance is essentially saying that because King County can’t prove there was no fraud, we should assume there was fraud. That won’t float in court. This is a Hail Mary attempt to get the public to pre-judge the contest. Then, when Rossi loses, as it is almost certain he will given the evidence produced to date, the GOP can run around claiming “We wuz robbed!”
Vance is just hoping to hype the indignation level to gain an advantage in 2006. Of course, intervening events that we can only guess at are likely going to be more significant to that election than any lingering resentment from 2004 for anyone other than the hard-core partisans.
Why would want anyone want Rossi for governor anyway? The guy is a fucking idiot like most other republifuks. He even supports Bush HAHAHAH! How dumb do you have to be to do that? Hi my name is Dino and I support the stupidest president of all time.
herb@19,
Well, if Bush is the “stupidest” (is that even a word?) then what does that say about John Kerry and the Democrats?
Herb….
Your attitude is exactly why Bush is on his 2nd term and why Hillary is going to get crushed in 2008
U2@10,
So when presented with factual evidence of FRAUD in King County Elections, you go off on some tangent about Bush? Man you can’t even stay on topic.
Wayne;
What if I was your bookkeeper? Would you be so charitable?
I’ll argue they intentionally don’t want tight books, and intentionally not doing their jobs = evidence of fraud.
If you were the Dem elections official, you of course would want to allow any and all ballots to show up, whether from felons, homeless, people showing up at the last minute. If you tighten the screws to account for all the ballots, you’d never be able to in a reasonable amount of time process the huge array of ballots you want to. So you leave the procedures loose, no audits, no controls, and you succeed in harvesting more votes than voters…
Herbalizer. Isn’t it time to run by some more sudafed for your meth lab?
Vance is just taking a cheap shot at Democrats. I would like to ask Vance why, if he’s so sure Democrats stuffed the ballot box, his party’s poll watchers didn’t say anything at the time? Are all GOP poll watchers blind? The reason they didn’t see it happen is because it didn’t happen. Vance is blowing brain farts.
Donna@17,
Fair enough. Then please apply your logic to the 2000 presidential race. President Bush won because he is called President Bush.
Patrick,
They DID. They screamed bloody murder. The liberal controlled media completely ignored them as did you. The mere fact that there were convassing groups altering ballots where they consisted of two Democrats and one Republican tells you who the vote altering will favor.
Beware — Bush lies and people die.
I know this will be suppressed by Goldy, ut here it is:
Look who’s talking:
“COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Former
President Clinton said Wednesday the political changes in
Iraq, including parliamentary elections in January, will help bring stability to the region.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....ton_iraq_1
pbj @ 26 agreed!
By hook or by crook.
wow, paul berendt was so defensive this morning on KTTH. is he in loser mode? LOL. I swear he almost cried again. what did we tell you guys? King county election workers printed blank ballots and took them home. King county had more votes than voters. hmmmm a coincidence?
I bet it happened in 2000 also, probably how cantdowell won. another loser. she has done ZIP for us in the last 4 1/2 years. Sheriff Reichert has don way more. he even saved Pelosi’s Italian leather shoes. yuck. hope he washed his hands.
Vote Fraud here and Hillary campaign fraud. Will Rosen take the fall? Will Peter paul write a book and expose all the clinton skeletons? We live in very exciting times.
Goldy,
Chris Vance has two discrepancies: (1) 875 more absentee ballots than voters — apparently relying on crediting records, and (2) 216 more poll/provisional ballots than voters — apparently relying on actual poll book signatures.
The absentee ballots vs. voters issue will be hard to prove, unless there is an actual analysis of original source documents — i.e the actual absentee ballot envelopes.
Voter crediting records are probably 99.8% to 99.9% accurate. However, even though this is virtually certain, Judge Bridges rejected them as proof of whether given individual — i.e. an ineliginle felon — voted or not. The actual poll book signatures or absentee ballot envelopes are better proof — even though 99.8% to 99.9% accuracy is extremely convincing in an individual case.
To put it in layman’s terms, I wouldn’t mind buying Goldy one beer for every one of the 2,000 or so ineligible felons (on both party’s lists) who show up on the voter crediting records, but didn’t actually sign a poll book or ballot envelope. Probably wouldn’t be more than three or four of these folks wrongly credited (if any).
But when we have 566,000 or so absentee ballots counted, and a discrepancy of 875 based on voter crediting records, the margin of error at 99.8% to 99.9% accuracy is pretty significant. Basically, the error margin is the same as the discrepancy.
The King County absentee ballot processing is done by computer, with only about six seconds per ballot allowed. It would be very easy to see one out of 500 or one out of 1,000 ballot envelopes failing to be credited to the voter casting them.
If we went through all of the accepted absentee ballot envelopes, re-entered everything into the computer, sorted the envelopes out by precinct, double-checked each precinct to check the number of names entered into the computer, etc. etc. — then there is a very good chance that this 875 ballot vs. voter discrepancy could shrink down to almost nothing.
Then again, maybe the 875 ballot discrepancy would have remained. But if the GOP hasn’t counted all the accepted absentee envelopes, re-entered the data into a computer system, and otherwise double abd tripled checked, then it is unlikely that Judge Bridges will be convinced by voter crediting evidence alone.
However, the 216 ballot vs. voter discrepancy in poll/provisional ballots appears to use the best evidence available — namely an actual count of poll book signatures — and should stand up as solid evidence in court.
“However, the 216 ballot vs. voter discrepancy in poll/provisional ballots appears to use the best evidence available – namely an actual count of poll book signatures – and should stand up as solid evidence in court.”
Unless a few (less than .03%) of the voters did not sign the poll book for some reason – long lines, poll worker error, etc. So long as there is a reasonable alternative to fraud, the Court is not going to assume that fraud occurred.
The re-vote supporters are now jumping up and down about supposed insecurity of blank ballots given to Democrat pollworkers. However, there has not been any evidence that any of these ballots was improperly submitted. Just baseless speculation. And wouldn’t someone need to be clairvoyant to recognize on election day it might make a difference to stuff even a few hundred extra ballots, when the possibility the votes would make a difference was so slim. No one knew how close this election would be until the last day or so before the first count was completed.
Wayne;
The teenagers were seen walking home with six packs of beer. But since we found no empties, we don’t know if any harm was done.
Wayne @ 33
Actually, 216 is about 0.07% of the 300,000 or so poll voters.
The theory about voters forgetting to sign can easily be checked. When poll book entries are made, the poll worker is required to put the ballot number given the voter on the line with the voter’s name. The voter would then sign on that same line. So if a voter failed to sign, there would still be the ballot number by the voter’s name.
It is unlikely that the poll worker would simply forget to list the ballot number — AND also have the voter forget to sign. Poll voters are accustomed to signing the poll book. If the poll worker forgot to write down the ballot number, it is likely that the voter would have still wanted to sign the poll book.
Another check is to see whether all of the ballot numbers are listed in the poll book or otherwise accounted for. If a ballot number is missing, then maybe the poll worker issued it, but forgot to write it down or have the voter sign. But if all ballot numbers are accounted for, and there are still more ballots counted than ballot accounted for, then maybe the blank ballot given to the Democrat pollworker happens to be the extra unaccounted for ballot …
Wonder why our crack elections team isn’t doing this? Why are bloggers debugging their “records”?
If you had a company audit done as non-chalantly as these guys, you’d be fired for deriliction of duty.
Jim @ 28
I think you have that wrong. isn’t it, Newsweek Lies and people die?
And maybe it isn’t. You should know as well as anyone that speculation won’t carry the day in Court. This discrepancy is so small it could result from a combination of various weird errors. Voters handed two ballots stuck together; it was busy and pollworkers got confused about who had signed and who hadn’t; counting errors, who knows what else. The fact that it could be ballot fraud doesn’t mean it is, and the GOP has the burden of proof.
Of course the GOP gets all huffy about the burden of proof, and accuse us of being okay with fraud so long as nobody can prove it. I just don’t believe there was any, and the Shark’s number crunching shows only small discrepancies, not the reasons behind them. The GOP just shouts fraud because it suits their purpose.
Righton:
If you had millions of dollars, and your checkbook was off by a few hundred, and your choices were 1) Spend thousands of dollars and many hours to find the error, or 2) adjust your checkbook and ignore the error, most people would just adjust their checkbook. That’s what has historically occurred in elections. If there is no recount, nobody knows, or cares, about the small discrepancies.
If i knew every month i was off by hundreds of dollars, indeed i would know and i would care. (effectively what you said, each election ok to be off cuz cheaper to just fudge instead of being accurate)
You think Boeing or Wa Mu thinks like that?
Comment on 22, what “factual evidence of fraud in King County?” All I see Vance putting out is a recyled version of the phony reconciliation argument Judge Bridges has already rejected.
Comment on 40, the problem with this whole argument that seems totally lost on you and your “oh-so-right-on” friends (NOT!) is these records were never intended to be used for the accounting you claim is off.
Richard Pope @ 32 & 33
Good comments and analysis. You say:
“However, the 216 ballot vs. voter discrepancy in poll/provisional ballots appears to use the best evidence available – namely an actual count of poll book signatures – and should stand up as solid evidence in court.”
Solid evidence of what? Improper or illegal votes? Or fraud?
I don’t see sufficient evidence to prove fraud. There are just too many opportunities for various mistakes to have caused this discrepancy.
Wayne@33,
“And wouldn’t someone need to be clairvoyant to recognize on election day it might make a difference to stuff even a few hundred extra ballots, when the possibility the votes would make a difference was so slim.”
No. If you are the last county to post your “results” then you know all the cards and EXACTLY how many illegal votes are required.
As far as fraud goes, dead people voting is fraudulent. Non US citizens voting is fraudulent.
pbj @ 44, 45
During the original count, the counties were posting totals as they went. King’s last posting was not that many votes, like a thousand or so. And for some reason, I suspect the counting was being watched very carefully by the GOP.
How many dead people and non-citizens have been shown to have voted? Not many, and not enough to change the results. So whether it is fraud by individuals, or just illegal, is irrelevant, because it didn’t change the results.
pbj @ 45
actually, that’s not true. It is evidence of illegal voting, not necessarily of fraud–and certainly not of official fraud, which is the only relevant kind in an election contest.
pbj @ 22, ????? You think that the hollow words you quoted amount to facts? Damn gal, get a life. You posted
“Vance said that could change. “We believe that the existence of the discrepancy is evidence of fraud.”
There you go – FRAUD. Time for dean Logan to go to jail.
Well if this is all it takes to make FACTS: “I said that all Republicans that are for cancelling the filibuster in the Senate are committing fraud towards the US Constitution”
Well there you go. Fraud is proven. Maybe we can send them to GITMO as they think it is such a wonderful place to send people that have not actually been charged with anything.
Patrick@42. What do you mean the records weren’t kept for checking the election? Do we keep voter and ballot information for checking the tide tables? Clam production?
Of course we have to have records, and we use what we have. Ridiculous to defend the election by saying, “we have books that show a problem, but they don’t apply cuz they really weren’t designed to ever track problems.
Gee, the surveilance camera never recorded the images cuz we never thought we’d get robbed (but we still bought the camera)
Have you LEFTIST PINHEADS worn yourselves out yet???
The problem the Dems and Logan have stems back to what was reported to the KingCo Canvassing Board and what was certified. What do you call knowingly certifying incorrect information?? What do you call knowingly failing to disclose and investigate discrepancies??
Is that Fraud? We’ll see.
Goldy–
I told you months ago rank-and-file KingCo Election workers would be deposed….remember??
It will be interesting to see what these folks were instructed to do and what they were instructed to overlook.
Crunch-time folks.
Mr. Cynical @ 50
“The problem the Dems and Logan have stems back to what was reported to the KingCo Canvassing Board and what was certified. What do you call knowingly certifying incorrect information??”
Cut the bullshit, Cynical. You know very well the law does not require certification of error free results.
Chew2 @ 43
“Solid evidence of what? Improper or illegal votes? Or fraud?”
It might just be solid evidence of errors and mistakes.
Sharkansky thinks that a lot of the extra ballots came from the duplication process, where the original ballot is hard to read. In such case, they are supposed to give the original ballot a control number, get a new blank ballot and put the same control number on it, and copy the old ballot to the new ballot. Stefan thinks that sometimes these control numbers were entered, and both the old ballot and the new ballot were tossed into the count.
It is hard to say, but if there are 216 extra poll ballots, then something was done wrong.
DJ
What does the law require? Really, what in the world do we spend money on? Just to say the words “certified”, or actually to make our elections honest, accountable, trackable, etc.
Seems you all want banana republic elections (or Cook County)
righton: So, what’s your point? Do you contend that the law requires withholding certification if a single error is found in the reconciliation? If not, how many errors do you think the law allows?
The fact is, the law doesn’t require error-free elections. It requires that tally sheets be maintained for each polling place showing the number of ballots issued, number counted, etc. It requires that election workers attempt to reconcile discrepancies. All of this was done.
The law does provide relief if one can show that mistakes in the election caused one to lose. So far, Rossi doesn’t seem to have any way of showing that. That’s why he’s going to lose — again.
Righton @ 54
”What does the law require? Really, what in the world do we spend money on? Just to say the words “certified”, or actually to make our elections honest, accountable, trackable, etc.”
The law requires that the results be certified if they can be ascertained with reasonable certainty. If they don’t certify the election it is a class C felony. Here is the RCW.
RCW 29A.60.200 Canvassing board — Canvassing procedure — Penalty. …
The county canvassing board shall proceed to verify the results from the precincts and the absentee ballots. The board shall execute a certificate of the results of the primary or election signed by all members of the board or their designees. Failure to certify the returns, if they can be ascertained with reasonable certainty, is a crime under RCW 29A.84.720.
Note that the law explicitly allows the results to be imperfect, provided they are known with reasonable certainty.
It boils down to whether the KC results, with a few hundred know but uncorrectable problems, were known with “reasonable certainty.” KC corrected all known (at the time) and correctible problems. The known but uncorrectable problems were of such a small magnitude (especially considered the lopsided final KC election results) that the results are easily within “reasonable certainty.” They could objectively estimate a proportion of errors of roughly 0.001. This is a remarkably low proportion of errors when examined against other equally scrutinized elections of this magnitude.
ID10T @ #10. George Galloway was getting paid off by Saddam’s henchmen. Do you need the URLs to read it yourself? I posted the first one yesterday. Guess you missed your favorite Englishman getting his comeuppance in England’s Parliament?
BTW, how do you all explain the Logan and Huennekens’ depositions?
Ha, ha, ha!!!
Pudster
dj
a) I’m mostly arguing what is right, not necessarily the law. Its perverse to watch an intentionally sloppy system being held up as legal, thus good
b) I don’t know of the other elections you refer to (those of equal magnitude). Which other ones of this size have more votes than people voting?
righton: Funny, but it seems that your definition of “right” seems to flexibly encompass whatever set of circumstances favors yours political candidate at the moment. If the law helps your guy — you’re all for it. If not, you reject it and shift to some other hazy but convenient notion of what’s “right”. Sounds like a hell of a way to run things.
I don’t see what’s wrong with the election law as written. It acknowledges that errors will occur — they always do in a human enterprise the size of a statewide election. It provides relief for the losing side if they can show they lost as a result of errors — but it doesn’t allow the loser to take advantage of the mere presence of errors to overturn an otherwise proper election. Sorry if that means things don’t work out your way this time.
scottd
What would it reasonably take then to show more voters voted for Rossi than Gregoire?
a)i don’t accept the 3rd set of votes, in that it includes post-certifcation additions.
b)even if you did, what is the standard….Rossi has to find actual ballots that really say Rossi inside.
Question i;m posing, you say Dems can get the recount, but once it favors them, Rossi has an extraordinarily high standard of proof. I say, look at the ballots pre Dem insertion of extra votes, then do a count
Richard Pope @ 53
If, as you suggest, this was error or mistake, how can the GOP show that it changed the outcome of the election?
If the excess ballot count was due to duplicate ballots, as Sharkansky suggests, would this necessarily result in double votes and if so, for whom? Wasn’t the reason they duplicated the ballot in the first place because the ballot was mismarked and couldn’t be read properly by the vote counting machines.
I think you libs are saying that no matter how much nonsense went on, you have to produce ballots that really say Rossi, not Gregoire. You are saying all the badness of the handling of this election, including letting Dems take blank ballots home (must be same guys helping kids on the wasl), means nothing
i don’t accept the 3rd set of votes, in that it includes post-certifcation additions
Of course you don’t — that’s when it became clear that your guy had lost. As we all know, that’s simply unacceptable.
The additions you mentioned were simply corrections to previous errors. They were legal ballots of known provenance that had erroneously been left out of previous counts. If they had been excluded from the final recount, and Gregoire had lost, those ballots would have provided grounds for a challenge because they would have represented an error that had caused Gregoire to lose. The court recognized this and allowed the ballots to be counted. Again, tough for you.
You asked what it would take to show that Rossi had received more votes than Gregoire. The answer to that is obvious: They would have to count the ballots and come up with a count of Rossi votes that was greater the Gregoire’s count. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way and nothing else is going to satisfy you.
righton: BTW, Gregoire would have won the final count by 8 votes, even if the additional ballots you mentioned had been excluded.
Scottd
You mean somebody actually knows the real vote total by real voters? And you know none of the ballots were part of those taken home by the poll workers and re-inserted when they came back to work?
Does your local bank allow employees to take home the cash till and then return it unaudited on Monday morning?
righton @ 62
“I think you libs are saying that no matter how much nonsense went on, you have to produce ballots that really say Rossi, not Gregoire. You are saying all the badness of the handling of this election, including letting Dems take blank ballots home (must be same guys helping kids on the wasl), means nothing”
I am not sure I understand your question. But, I will state that I don’t beleive there was any “nonsense” going on. And, objectively, the election was not handled badly. The observed rate of error we see in this election is well within acceptable and ordinary range. Errors always occur in every election of this magnitude (2.9 Million voters).
Does your local bank allow employees to take home the cash till and then return it unaudited on Monday morning?
Don’t be an idiot. Blank ballots are not like cash. They are easily produced or reproduced, and there are many ways for them to be released to the environment in an uncontrolled fashion. For example, KingCo elections sent out over 600,000 absentee ballots, but tens of thousands of those were never returned. Who knows what happened to them. Most likely, the voters who received them simply threw them away, but who knows?
You seem to think that access to blank ballots (by election workers!) is some kind of prima facie evidence of fraud — but it isn’t. To commit fraud, those ballots need to be illegaly voted and then counted. If Rossi can present evidence that this has happened, he has a case. Just speculating on what might have happened leaves him unemployed.