On second thought, maybe the GOP’s “proportional analysis” proposal isn’t such a bad idea.
The Seattle P-I reports that four Eastern Washington counties that voted overwhelmingly for Dino Rossi, tallied 1793 provisional ballots without first matching signatures to those on file.
“We did not check their signatures against our signatures in-house,” said Auditor Nancy McBroom in Adams County. “With the new law, it says, I guess, you’re supposed to confirm the signatures,” McBroom said.
Yeah, gee… I guess I s’pose so, Nancy.
If the courts were to use proportional analysis to toss out these ballots, it would expand Christine Gregoire’s lead by an additional 360 votes. However….
Republicans, who would like the proportional analysis applied in Gregoire’s stronghold of King County, say the problems with provisional ballots in Eastern Washington can’t be compared to those in King County.
Uhhh… that’s because, um… us city folk just can’t be trusted, whereas you can forget about your cares, it is time to relax at the Junction. See, big ol’ nasty King County is filled with Democratic cheats, so we had to carefully check each signature for three points of similarity (tossing out thousands of absentee and provisional ballots in the process.) But Billy Jo, Bobbie Jo and Betty Jo are honest as the day is long, thus Adams, Stevens, Walla Walla, and Whitman counties didn’t need to bother checking signatures at all.
Right.
What these revelations really tell us is that shit happens, it always happens, and that it happened throughout the state… even in Rossi country. Indeed, when it comes to provisional ballots, it looks like quite a bit more shit happened outside of King County than within.
Ballots Fucked Error County Counted Prov. Rate Whitman 18,122 783 4.32% Stevens 20,606 560 2.72% Adams 5,204 108 2.00% Walla Walla 23,269 342 1.47% King 899,199 660 0.07%
So much for gross incompetence and corruption in King County. Hmmm… why haven’t I heard EFF President Bob Williams squawking on talk radio that Nancy McBroom is a “crook” who should be jailed? Could it be that she’s a Republican?
You heard this from me first. I posted on HA about these provisionals several days ago.
If you do a proportional analysis on those four counties, here’s the breakdown:
Adams – Rossi 73, Gregoire 32
Stevens – Rossi 347, Gregoire 196
Walla Walla – Rossi 215, Gregoire 95
Whitman – Rossi 415, Gregoire 345
Net difference – 367 more votes subtracted from Rossi than subtracted from Gregoire — which is more than the number of invalid King County provisionals.
As I said in my post earlier this week, there are more than enough improperly handled provisionals in Rossi counties to wipe out any advantage to Rossi from the KC provisionals.
And the plot thickens. Now where are all of the wingnuts wanting to placed their bets? Maybe it is not the proper time for Rossi to retire from state politics and move to WDC….where he can fit in better with their ‘inn crowd’ and spend his time trying to cover up the Texas Taco’s f-ups
I’m truly shocked, SHOCKED! that there’s mistakes in Republican counties that out-number and outweigh the much larger King County. It rocks my faith in the Republican party election officials to the core, who I had previously held up as the gold standard or perfection.
I wonder how the righties will try to spin this one? They’ll probably say, “Well, there was a Democrat in the building and he influenced everyone to forget to check signatures. Damn communist mind control tricks!”
Sh*t happens, this election was unusually close, let’s figure out how to do better next time. End of story.
agreed jcricket. unusually close, nothing more nothing less. Some one wins and someone loses. Life goes on.
jpgee@: “Maybe it is not the proper time for Rossi to retire from state politics and move to WDC……”
Maybe Rossi can try to rent Graceland since Elvis has left the building and Christine has the Governor’s Mansion tied up for four year term and he knows it by now.
First of all, our president is Texan like jpgee is cool.
Second, it sounds like Goldy is the greatest proponent for the election reforms that we have been calling for. This is just one more sign of a flawed tendency to allow anyone to vote who desires to do so, regardless of true intent or identity. Just another reason for Rossi to prevail in his assertion that this election was fatally flawed.
Bite the big one @ 8
“We”? Who wanted election reform? If you support rossi, what YOU wanted, was for gregoire to “hurry up and concede” when you thought you were in danger of falling behind in votes.
Remember? with increasing scrutiny, it became more and more apparent, the real estate swindler, was going to be a LOSER!!!
Then, after you finally realized your guy didn’t get elected, you started making false accusations of organized fraud, and covered that with screams of election reform.
After, the real estate swindler was losing. This is when you people wanted reform.
You would have said absolutely nothing, had there not been an accurate count. You would have accepted the erroneous numbers, because your guy was in , and that would have been good enough.
Its your team, that accepts black box voting, remember?
But you’re LEFTISTS! And all right-thinking, God-fearing, Bible-believing, free-market, Wal-Mart-loving Americans know LEFTISTS SUCK!
The election was FIXED by LEFTISTS! And we are ANGRY! So up YOURS, you LEFTISTS!
Happpy April 1st, everyone.
Of course this whole issue is mute because adjusting election results based on proportional analysis of the voter error is a fairy tale that has no basis in state law and will never be supported by the courts.
Shawn @10,
Of course you’re right; I only facetiously suggest proportioning these Eastern WA provisionals, and I wouldn’t expect a court of law to accept proportional analysis. However I believe the problems in counties that heavily favored Rossi makes it much more difficult for him to garner sympathy for his case in the court of public opinion.
I do find it curious that usually the righties are the first to jump on a thread, and yet the only one I’ve heard from thus far is
zapporoDubyasuxBitestheBigOne. And by the way, Zap/DSBBO… your echo of Chris Vance’s argument that any error or illegal vote — even one that favors Rossi — is an argument for setting aside this election… well, it’s just plain silly. Such a precedent would create an odd incentive for the parties to secretly hoarde irregularities, just in case there is a close election that goes the other way.Our contest statute clearly (and pragmatically) requires showing that irregularities and/or illegal votes actually changed the outcome.
now you have heard from a second republican. if the error rate in E WA is so high that it reasonably (or more so) offsets the errors in King County, then Rossi will lose his court case.
most republicans have only sought fairness. and that errors be as low as possible. if errors offset, then Gregoire holds office and it is time to make the system more accurate for future elections.
I will await all explanations, however. they will be presented in court soon. unlike some re the 2000 Presidential election, I won’t spend any extra time moaning about an election that “stands”.
The end of the PI article quotes Vance as saying “if need be, they could go back and check the signatures.”
I suppose they kept the envelopes. Even if they do retroactively check the signatures, there will probably be a dozen or so signatures that don’t match. And, they will not be able to pull those exact ballots.
It is remarkable to me is that it took so long for this problem to surface. If King County had overlooked signatures on this scale, we would have long since known about it. The take home messages are:
1. Errors occurred in every county. Without evidence of a conspiracy to overturn the election, there is not much we can do about these errors (except use them to improve the next election).
2. Before a “proportional adjustment” could be applied, all counties would need to have their election procedures scrutinized to the same degree as King County. “Adjusting” one county while ignoring errors in other counties is patently unfair.
Hmmmm . . . I wonder what objective measure we could use to ensure that all counties have been scrutinized equally?
To all:
So what have we learned from all of this?
That our election system is screwed up and we have no real idea what happened in this election.
Wait just a doggone minute there Goldy.
You’re forgetting the FELON voters. ReMEMber? There were 1100, no wait, 900, or was it 450, or some other number of FELON voters.
And everybody knows every one of those FELONS voted Gregoire. How do we know that? Well, it’s just common sense. Why would FELON vote for the law an order party. I mean come on, the words democrat and FELON are practically synonymous.
And why else would Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi try to restore voters rights to FELONS unless the knew in their hearts they would all vote democrat.
And don’t waste your breath with that crap about all of them so far saying they voted for Rossi. I mean that right there tells you they voted for Gregoire. Why would they tell the truth, they’re democrats.
OK, so there were mistakes made over in Rossi country. But that’s because you KC Liberals take all our tax dollars and spend them on your pet projects like stadiums carpool lanes. So we don’t have the big budget for counting votes.
So how ’bout we all just agree this election was a bust and have a redo. It’s sorta like both our tee shots went into the woods, so let’s both take a mulligan and start from scratch. That way, when we lose next time, we can preserve our dignity by saying all we ever wanted was a perfect election process, who cares who won.
What we have also learned, is the right wing, will accuse without much evidence, and the dems. and liberals, will look for the truth. The republicans, have made a mess of this election, with all the false accusations.
‘Sniff ‘Sniff I smell distributed voted fraud – by the R’s.
Rob McKenna are you listening or are you still stuck in meetings with the BIAW?
Put a fork in Dino – he’s done…
Unkl Witz @ 15
“So how ’bout we all just agree this election was a bust and have a redo. . . .”
Pass. How ’bout we continue to follow the laws of this state?
Note to self: Don’t play golf with Unkl Witz.
Chris Vance is right–the ones in E WA are not like the ones in King. The ones in King were improperly submitted, but properly evaluated for validity. The E WA ballots appear properly submitted…but NOT properly evaluated.
What’s that mean? It means that King can honestly say that around 83% of their provisionals, regardless of how they went through the machines, were cast by valid voters. What percent of provisionals can the four Eastern counties claim to know are valid? ZERO percent.
Here’s a hypothetical. You run a bar. Your doorman is charged with keeping underaged kids out of the bar. Which would you prefer he do, in order to preserve your liquor license?
A) Allow a bunch of kids into the bar by mistake without checking IDs, but then hunt down as many as you can that got inside and make sure that they’re really of age?
or
B) Check everybody’s ID at the door, but never try to match the picture to the face, or see if the date of birth makes them old enough?
Neither choice is perfect, but I’d feel a lot safer with doorman A.
In any case, this just about destroys whatever was left of Rossi’s case.
Goldy, you guys keep pointing out more reasons why a runnoff election is in order…
Chuck @20 So are you all going to apologize now for all of the overblown tin-foil hat conspiracy theories that have been so recklessly thrown around? Or maybe you guys want to start calling for Republican heads since you are so principled in this?
I am happy to talk about common sense election reforms to fix the problems, but the partisan accusations thrown around that undermine the idea of democracy in this state have no excuse.
All arguements aside, you are an elitist prick by insinuating the rural part of this state is full of hicks. Bobbi Jo and Bille Sue… Fuck you.
torridjoe@19
How about the most logical thing…evacuate the bar THEN recheck IDs as the patrons come back in…oh, that is like a revote isnt it?
that’s logical? What did the rest of the patrons do to deserve that?
Angry @22,
Um… that was a Petticoat Junction reference.
And I find it curious that it’s not offensive to say Democrats are more likely to cheat than Republicans (“distributed vote fraud”) or that KC elections is more corrupt or incompetent than the rest of the state… but it is offensive to imply that Eastern WA has an unusually high number of women with the middle name “Jo.”
Lighten up.
TJ: I’m not sure I agree with your analysis. King County only rejected 307 out of 32996 provisional ballots due to signature problems — less than 1%. They rejected over 4100 because the voter wasn’t registered or had already voted absentee. From the linked P-I report, it appears that the other four counties checked the basic voter information and probably rejected a number of ballots based on that info — they just didn’t bother to check the signatures. If their signature rejection rate was the same as King County’s, we’d be talking about maybe a dozen ballots that should have been rejected.
Furthermore, the provisional ballot envelopes should have been saved along with other election materials. It should be possible to check the signatures now and see how many ballots should have been rejected. My guess is that number will not be very large.
In the broader sense, I do agree that King County’s errors are probably unremarkable in the sense that a detailed investigation of other counties is likely to reveal similar errors — and none of them is likely to show a pattern of organized fraud that will favor one candidate. But I think this particular story is not very significant.
Scottd @26,
This particular story is significant, in that it points out how insignificant the KC provisional ballot problem was. In both cases, mistakes were made that resulted in number of ballots be counted without having been properly canvassed. And in both cases, the vast majority of these ballots would have been counted had they been properly canvassed.
If it had been revealed that KC had failed to check signatures, it would have been reported on (u)SP and talk radio as a scandal. These Eastern WA provisionals just put into perspective how overblown the charges fromt he other side are.
scott, I know the actual number of additional invalid ballots is likely quite small. I said potentially zero for a reason. But just like the fact that 80%+ misfed provisionals turned out to be valid doesn’t mean King didn’t make procedural mistakes that they should be held to account for, the availability of primary documents and a suspected low error rate doesn’t mean the eastern counties didn’t ALSO make procedural mistakes.
I agree with you that as a numeric equivalency exercise, this news is minor. But then, I’ve been saying that King’s provisional problems are minor as well, for the same reason you cite: the numbers of truly bogus ballots are tiny. What makes this story important, IMO, is that it indicates a natural pattern of electoral mistakes. They get made, whether you live in urban or rural areas, or whether your area voted Rossi or Gregoire. And that’s why it kills Rossi’s case: it shows that King’s performance was not anomalous.
Goldy @ 11
Oh come on Goldy, look at the possibilities here! This is a precedent we might want. In future, every time they accuse Democrats of vote fraud, we’ll reply there’s no way to know who won and demand a new election (but only if they won)!
BTW how do you like my disguise? :D
prr @ 14
Wrong, we have a real good idea what happened in this election — the Republicans tried to lie, manipulate, and spin their guy into office, and were never honestly interested in finding out who really won.
Unkl Witz @ 15
They don’t want a mulligan. They want to count their tee shot into the woods as a hole in one.
Note to dj @ 18 — Unca Witz is on our side; he’s being facetious.
Cheesy Chuckie @ 20
Chuckie, I gotta admit I admire your spunk. You’re gonna keep playing that fiddle until the Titanic is completely under the waves! God bless you, man! You’re a real credit to the Maritime Musicians Union. Can I have your life belt since you’re not planning to use it?
AV @ 22
Who’s insinuating? The rural part of this state is full of hicks. We’ve said it all along. Over there, it’s not “fuck you” it’s “fuck everything” including the sheep and Cousin Sue. hee haw! hee haw!
DubyasuxBitesDubyasuxBitesTheBigOne @ 32
Thanks!
Unkl Witz @ 18
Sorry, man. Nice satire! The sad thing is that your over-the-top commentary is indistinguishable from actual rantings of some wingnuts.
TJ and Goldy: I don’t think we disagree on much here. I’ve always felt that this election (and any election) included a number of procedural errors which aren’t going to mean anything unless it can be shown that those errors provided enough of a bias to unfairly award the office. So far, the GOP hasn’t come anywhere near to showing that kind of bias.
Goldy, you’re right in pointing out that this story shows that procedural errors don’t exclusively accrue to King County. However, I don’t think you want to use (u)SP and talk radio as your standards for intellectual honesty. Stefan doesn’t feel burdened by the need to present a coherent argument. Right now, he’s spinning away from his crazy numerological “proofs” that KingCo stole the election and moving back to the inane (and illegal) argument that the whole thing’s such a mess that the only thing to do is throw the election out and try again. Next week, he’ll be trying something else. It’s not a pretty sight and you don’t want to go there.
My point was a narrow one, in the interest of accuracy. The four counties in question counted 1793 ballots without checking signatures — although they did check to verify that the voters were eligible to vote. Of course, it’s possible that some of the signatures won’t match, but that’s not very likely — and the counties should still have the signatures available to check. My guess is that when they check those signatures, they’ll find maybe a dozen questionable ballots. TJ @ 19 seemed to be overreaching by implying a much bigger problem. His response @ 28 cleared that up nicely.
torridjoe@24
Im sure they would be behind the decision, to keep minors out of the bar!
DubyasuxBitesDubyasuxBitesTheBigOne@33
Well you might be on the titantic…and yes you can have my life jacket, I am already happily on board the Carpathia…
DubyasuxBitesDubyasuxBitesTheBigOne@34
Speak for yourself, we dont want to fuck your sheep or your cousin sue…sounds like you have a great family there…
Cheesy Chuckie @ 38
Ain’t it just like a Republican to steal some kid’s seat in a lifeboat …
Cheesy Chuckie @ 39
Those are Republican voters I’m describing, but like the water of the North Atlantic, I guess that’s too deep for you. haha
DJ @ 35:
Whadda ya mean ‘satire’? I meant every damn word of it…..
Hey, wanna play golf sometime?
Unkl Witz @ 41
Sure thing! But, do I get to call “do-overs” if you narrowly win? :-)
Dubyasux@40
You sounded so sincere in the description I am certain that it was your own family…
Before most of you wet your pants and pi$$ all over yourselves in excitement, you should consider what the failure of Whitman, Stevens, Adams and Walla Walla counties to check *ANY* of their provisional ballots for signatures really means.
First of all, there is no requirement whatsoever in state law (RCW) for signatures on provisional ballots to be checked for matching. By contrast, the RCW expressly requires signatures on absentee ballots to be checking for matching.
There is a WAC regulation (WAC 434-253-049) which says that a provisional ballot “shall be processed in a manner similar to an absentee ballot”. But what does this mean? Does it include signature matching? If the Secretary of State wanted signature matching on provisional ballots, should he have expressly said so in the WAC regulation about provisional ballots? 35 out of 39 counties do signature matching on provisional ballots.
However, the other four counties do not do signature matching. This is because provisional votes, unlike absentee voters, show up personally in front of election workers at the polls on election day, provide their personal information, and sign an oath in the presence of election workers. Provisional voters do the same thing that poll voters do, but provide more information and sign more paperwork. Since the signatures of poll voters are not verified, these four counties don’t verify the signatures of provisional voters either.
Most provisional ballots are rejected because the voter isn’t registered in the first place or has already voted, and not because of signature problems. First, provisional ballots are checked to see if the person is actually registered in the county. Second, provisional ballots are checked to see if the person has already voted (i.e. by absentee or casting a vote at the correct polling place). Finally (in 35 out of 39 counties), the signature on the provisional ballot envelope is compared with the signature in the voter registration files.
In King County, 32,442 provisional ballots were processed for King County (32,996 minus 554 sent to other counties). 4,432 (13.661%) of these were rejected, including only 307 (0.946%) for signature mismatch. The other 4,125 (12.715%) were rejected for not being registered or already voting.
Presumably, the 1,793 provisional ballots in these four counties were all checked to make sure the voters were registered and had not already voted. So the number of signatures that might be mismatched is probably less than one percent. (Remember that King County had the most rigorous signature matching of any county and three times the percentage of signature mismatches as the rest of the state.) I doubt that you could find even a dozen ballots out of thes 1,793 that a signature expert would testify was signed by someone one.
This provisional signature non-checking in Whitman, Stevens, Adams and Walla Walla counties isn’t exactly “news”. The state Democrats first brought it up back in early December, when the manual recount was starting. They filed a lawsuit in the state Supreme Court, trying to force King County to recheck its signatures on rejected absentee and provisional ballots.
The state Democrats argued that Whitman, Stevens, Adams and Walla Walla counties hadn’t checked the signatures on provisional ballots at all, and also that King County had three times the signature rejection rate of the rest of the state. Therefore, it would only be fair for King County to recheck signature rejections.
The state Supreme Court rejected the Democrats’ lawsuit. I think their arguments will likewise go nowhere in front of Judge Bridges.
Their only hope would be to get a signature expert to testify that specific signatures on provisional ballots in these four counties did not match and couldn’t have been signed by the real voter. They would also have to use other siganture samples from the real voter — since these voters would have been notified and given a chance to correct their signature, had there been a signature matching policy for provisionals in those four counties. Like I said before — great expense for the Democrats, and I doubt they would even find a half dozen cases where the real voter didn’t sign.
Richard @44,
Thanks for the detailed post, and I don’t really dispute much of what you write. I just blogged about a conversation I had yesterday with Adams County Auditor Nancy McBroom, and she explained that the statute was modified to require matching provisional signatures, to bring WA into compliance with HAVA. So these counties’ procedures were not in compliance with the law.
But I think your analysis suffers from a forest-trees problem. I don’t think the issue is the legal ramifications of these improperly canvassed provisionals in Eastern WA. I think this whole incident speaks to the larger issue of whether King County was disproportionately or unusually incompetent.
The GOP would have the election set aside due to problems in heavily Democratic King County. Lacking the ability to show that illegal votes and other irregularities likely changed the outcome, the GOP is attempting to insinuate that this is likely due to incompetence or corruption in heavily Democratic King County. But these same kinds of problems occurred throughout the state, in equal or greater numbers.
Ironically, many of the errors in King County actually favored Dino Rossi. If not for the misclassified “no signature on file” ballots, Gregoire would have won the machine recount, and it would have been Rossi who would have paid for a hand recount that expanded her lead. And if you have faith in the GOP’s “proportional analysis” the 87 uncounted absentee ballots just discovered would surely have added to Gregoire’s lead as well.
Anyway, I just think that errors in pro-Rossi counties put errors in King County into perspective.
Comment by Goldy — 4/2/05 @ 1:26 pm
Yeah probably, and that’s why we need a re-vote.
The truth is: We don’t know who won. The count changed 3X, the result 2X.
I’ve said this before, including yesterday on my blog: If the re-vote sign was blue and not red, I’d stand w/ Gregoire, Brost, Berendt, et. al. Why? Because with the felons voting, the more votes than voters, the inability of the King County Elections Director to voice support for the count, etc. (for more reasons – go HERE to “my personal cheat sheet list” and for all practical purposes the rest of the post) and the relative of a two-time northwest Wa. county commish primary candidate for the Democrats – I don’t want to live under that cloud.