Koster’s campaign said it was monitoring the ballot counting to ensure the process was fair.
“Though John Koster remains in a position to win, we are keenly aware that there are those who will do everything they can to keep this seat out of the hands of the new House majority,” Koster’s campaign manager Larry Stickney said in a statement.
“Therefore, we have a team of observers on the ground at county courthouses throughout the 2nd Congressional District. We are working with attorneys and election experts at the state and federal levels in anticipation of a possible recount scenario,” he said.
Right. Because the only way Koster could possibly lose this election would be massive, Democratic voter fraud.
Oh, go change your diaper, crybaby.
Truth is, we don’t need to do all that much to keep this seat out of Republican hands; Koster did it himself by hiring a gay-bashing, wife-beating, incompetent campaign manager like Larry Stickney.
Well, with results like this, let’s hope Stickney has a job every campaign season.
Birds of a feather flock together.
This story was linked to the Seattle Times page in the “Asshole” link in Goldy’s post:
Radio active rabbit caught at Hanford.
Anyone seen Roger lately?
Koster didn’t do too bad, considering how unpopular some of his ideas are. “Privatizing” social security? (more properly, “piratizing”) That goes over like a lead balloon for anybody with half a brain.
I think that far more voters in the 2nd were turned off by fears of Republicans like Koster fucking over the poor and favoring the rich, than by his opposition to gay marriage.
How much do you hold it against a candidate, just because his CAMPAIGN MANAGER was accused of assaulting a former wife about 16 years ago — especially when the campaign manager apparently was never charged or convicted of anything? There are shitloads of imperfect people in this word. While we may be inclined to reject candidates who have flaws, is it realistic to apply a litmus test to everyone who supports a candidate?
We may scorn Koster for talking about fraud and errors in a close election, but the fact is that there are plenty of errors in any election, which become noticeable when the election is close. For example, Dino Rossi was initially determined elected governor in 2004 by some 262 or so votes — and this was obviously incorrect, as subsequent recounts showed. And George W. Bush became president in 2000, in spite of Florida NEVER being allowed to conduct any sort of consistent recount of the votes in that state.
Some might say Stickney is right to be worried:
http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/.....27208.html
Stickney, if you’re reading this, some might say you should watch for alleged “lost ballots” to suddenly turn up. Also watch for an alleged possible higher incidence of ballot counters deciding that Republican voters signatures don’t match exactly vs Democratic voters.
Richard @3,
You miss the point. Stickney slanders election workers in six counties, and Democrats by implication, all for cheap political gain, and with no concern for how this might undermine public faith in the electoral process.
So it’s only fair to dredge up 16-year-old domestic abuse allegations in return.
Troll @4,
Why do you hate America? I mean I just assume you hate America, since you are clearly attempting to undermine democracy by lying about the how the elections process works.
I think every attempt to pirate/privatize social security to funnel billions to private financial “managers” will fail.
Social Security is simply not SUPPOSED to be a high risk, high return, speculative investment opportunity. You can do that yourself and no one stops you. I have 3 different “private” IRAs, and can invest whatever I want in gold, blackjack table in Vegas, or putting odds on the Seahawks in the superbowl (hmm). Social Security was supposed to be a SIMPLE program that is ALWAYS there and DOES NOT fluctuate with the swings of the market. That lack of “potential” of high returns isn’t a flaw, it’s on purpose. It works great. Nothing prevents you from putting OTHER money in private investments (you REALLY should be anyway, diversify and all).
i hope the republicans try, very hard and very openly, to privatize social security as well as raise the retirement age.
@4 What does Washington State’s Counties and their Election Boards have to do with the vote in Connecticut?
Second, for any close vote, there are going to be discrepancies. People think if there are discrepancies, there is fraud, but processing a couple million ballots in under a week is a daunting task, and there are going to be some mistakes, Not hundred of thousand of ballots type of mistakes, but a couple hundred not counted, especially in big counties. Which is why there are recounts.
Bridgeport is in Fairfield County, I highly doubt that the county is going to have systematic fraud. What about the other cities in Fairfield County like Stamford, Danbury, Norwich, etc.?
I think people who bang away on the “Voter Fraud” drum are just using it to spout their racism.
# 7: Actually, Social Security was NEVER intended as an investment plan. It uses a tax on current worker’s pay to pay for current retiree’s pensions. F.D.R. is a bit at fault for this confusion, because he was deliberately vague when he sold the idea to the American public. Now, of course, it’s an immensely popular program, and doing anything to change Social Security is one of the “third rails” of American politics – you touch it, and you die.
Now there is a surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund, because we anticipated that the large demographic “bump” caused by the baby boomers would create problems when they retired. There wouldn’t be enough young workers paying into the system to support the baby boomer’s retirement at the current rates. So Social Security taxes were increased on their incomes to make sure there was enough available to fund their retirements. In short, the baby boomers are paying for their parent’s retirments while they are working, and a portion of their own retirements at the same time.
Nobody really knows how this attempt to transfer “saved wealth” will really work on a marco-economic scale. It’s not gold, silver, greenbacks, or hard assets (property or manufactured goods) being saved. Some of the money saved is for services rendered decades earlier, and the value of the underlying service evaporated a long time ago. Will the transfer of digits on a balance sheet from the “saved” money in the Trust Account into Social Security pension checks have the desired affect, or unintended consequences? No one knows for sure, but it’s the best plan we’ve got, and we are sticking to it.
But the money managers hate the idea of all that “saved money” just sitting there, without them being able to get their cut. So they continue to promote the false idea that this is a savings plan, so they can then pretend that they can make more money for us by investing it in the stock market – after taking a cut at every opportunity, of course.
I’ve seen their kind of “management” at work in my 401(k) plan, which offers limited choices in a handful of mutual funds, and management fees are taken out at every turn – by my own company, by the 401(k) plan managers, by the mutual fund managers, by traders with every stock trade, etc. After being in the program for fifteen years, I can see that I have accumulated enough money to retire for at little under two years. And the total of my contributions, combined with my employer’s matching contributions, actually exceed (slightly) the current value of my 401(k) plan. I could have done just as well by putting my money in a mattress for the past fifteen years.
So I’m not about to vote for anybody that wants to turn over Social Security to these same folks. When things go south (again), they will be the first to shrug their shoulders, tell us it was our own fault for investing with them, and argue that we have to throw in yet more money to make up for their mis-management.
Of course, Republicans would NEVER do anything illegal to influence an election, such as threatening opponants’s supporters or the candidate themselves, or a federal officer:
Man accused of threatening Sen. Murray in Spokane is Charged
@11
And you know he is a Republican how?
Just askin.
Goldy
Election officials do that themselves….
Any time there are more absentee ballots counted than cast, circa 2004, there’s going to be questions about the integrity of the vote.
An all mail in system is ripe for gaming.
And yes, I know that the King Co elections are run by a Republican.
I’m glad someone caught the reference that was being made regarding potential fraud.
It reinforces the GOP/tea bagger base that the only way he could lose a close election was because people found a way to manipulate the election.
This is still close enough to go either way. I really want to HA to be right on this race, but I would feel more comfortable with one more dump of ballots to confirm the trend.
re 12: Don’t be fatuous.
Let’s just say that reason would lead one to believe that someone who threatens a Democratic candidate is more than likely a conservative, and since the only other candidate running is a conservative Republican, one can safely assume that the threatener at the very least is a Republican sympathizer.
Therefore standing on the proposition that it is only a conjecture that the threatener was a Republican is specious and irrelevant — a mere detail.
Either that, or the threatener was a NAZI socialist.
@12 Where was it shown that more ballots were counted than cast? That’s one of those stories spun to perpetuate the myth that the poll workers are in this grand Democrat conspiracy.
There has never been any proof that elections have been manipulated. Sure, I’ll grant that few votes may not have been legally cast. As ruled by several courts, there is nothing to have changed the outcome of the election and certainly nothing comes even close to any conspiracy. Saying it over and over to yourself doesn’t make it true.
There hasn’t been one shred of evidence that the outcome of the 2004 election was the result of fraud. The same goes for this election.
Of course, the wingnuts are swiftly falling back on the “we wuz robbed by King County” claims.
But let’s look at what’s being said by people who really know the process – and are Republicans, to boot:
Source: Sorry, conspiracy theorists: no evidence of ‘fraud’ in Senate race
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I love this one:
And this one, from a guy who is on his third wife:
UPDATE!!!
On a piece of ground not too far away from where votes are being counted in Shnohomish, I saw a LOT of acorns on the ground.
Somebody from the Koster campaign should locate every acorn in WA-02 and assign campaign workers to watch them around the clock to ensure they don’t roll over and commit fraud.
ps. Congrats (once again) to Rick Larsen.
pps Congrats to the voters of WA who demonstrated their superior intelligence compared to most of the nation in this year’s elections.
What poor losers Republicans are. Their fraud mantra is pure projection. Stickney can stick his whining up his ass.
Speaking of whining, did you see the Orange Boner blubbering at the press conference?
What a friggin’ man-pussy.
Snohomish County is BIAW central. Koster, Stickney are birds of a feather. Reminds me of the Education of Little Tree: never ever trade with Christians.
But damn it, Larsen ran a shitty campaign. Koster should not have come anywhere near this close. Larsen should have burned Koster’s campaign to the ground with all of that Koster BS – from demanding a total and complete abortion ban to skipping the debates. It should have been shooting fish an a barrel.
Larsen should be thoroughly embarrassed that this banana slug named Koster got so close to winning the race. Maybe next time Rick will take things a bit more seriously.
Shamelessly off topic:
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
@14
Don’t be supercilious
Things aren’t always as they appear.
Remember this?
http://articles.latimes.com/20.....-2009nov25
@15
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ce31m.html
“The elections office did not have a firm grasp of the number of voters who voted and the number of ballots cast. There was a discrepancy of nearly 4,000 ballots.”
I am simply pointing out that King Co Elections has done more than any political party in undermining confidence in the integrity of elections here….
So, it appears that despite an ongoing rescession with employment hovering near 10%, a new Supreme Court mandate allowing corporations and others to anonymously contribute millions to Republican campaigns, and a “red wave” across the country, the best Republicans can do here is pick up a scattering of local statehouse seats and one Congressional district?
I guess western Washington does deserve credit for being one of the more intellilgent and best-educated areas of the nation.
@26
None of those ballet were considered fraudulent, nor did the Rossi camp contested them. The only absentee votes, I remembered to considered fraudulent is a Bothell man filling out his recently deceased wife’s absentee ballot, and he filled out for Rossi.
Second of all, the 2004 was a little bit more than the Governor’s mansion. If there was apparent fraud in the Gubernatorial contest, where is the fraud in Presidential contest? What about Patty Murray drumming of Nethercutt?
King County didn’t do anything wrong, as much as big counties are going to inundated with hundred of thousand of ballots. I don’t remember Slade Gorton crying in his towelette when he was winning in Washington State about fraud. Even though He hated Seattle, and ignored it, and King County like the plague.
“Oh, go change your diaper, crybaby.”
Nice turn of phrase, Goldy. This sums them up soooo well!
@27
http://factcheck.org/2010/10/foreign-money-really/
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol.....ney/64721/
many many many instances debunking this claim.
@4 Total bullshit. Goldy has already called you on this tripe, but I need to add something to what Goldy said: Mindlessly spewing factless talking points is lazy, and recycling this particular garbage proves you’re juvenile. Nobody is fooled except you.
@30 You’ve missed the point by approximately one mile to the one hundred trillionth gazillionth power.
@26 You lecturing someone else about being “supercilious”? Now that’s fun-neee!!!
Right Stuff,
“Any time there are more absentee ballots counted than cast, circa 2004, there’s going to be questions about the integrity of the vote.”
Funny thing. A judge in a very conservative county didn’t see the evidence as supporting your claim.
Now you are reduced to simply lying about it. That or you have been brainwashed by too much Wingding talk radio.
@34
The truly funny thing about it is the judge did find a handful of bogus votes, Republican ones!
re 26: And sometimes things are exactly as they seem. As follows:
http://www.democraticunderground.com
en.wikipedia.org/…/2004_United_States_election_voting_controversies
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0813-29.htm
http://www.stoptheaclu.com/.....-democrat- sun/
http://www.truth-out.org/docs_2006/060106R.shtml – CachedAmazon.com:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE412A.html
G.W. Bush Conspired with Others to Steal the 2000 and 2004 Elections (#4 of …. MyDem.org was created to give Democratic voters the tools we need to make …
electionfraudblog.com/election-fraud-beginners-guide/
………………:)
@20
I knew acorn had a hand in this! Good detective work.
@24
Nor should have Rossi.
D @34
Not “wingding” radio.
King county elections and the Seattle Times.
I am not aguing 2004 results.
I’m stating that King Co has done enough on their own to undermine their integrity. Per their own admissions
Right Stuff,
“I’m stating that King Co has done enough on their own to undermine their integrity. Per their own admissions”
But here are some facts to put that all in context.
(1) The rate of error found both in King County and Washington State as a whole were FAR BELOW error rates typically found in other state wide elections that had been closely scrutinized (Goldy previously posted a link to a study of such error rates).
(2) King county did not have the highest rate of error in 2004. There were three counties that had higher error rates. Yet, King County had the largest burden in the election, in terms of numbers of transactions per unit time.
(3) The bullshit you are dredging up is a discrepancy between voters credits and ballots cast. The discrepancies are not relevant, since the voter crediting system was not designed for quality control. There are numerous innocent reasons why the two don’t match.
In short, the VOTER CREDITING SYSTEM is not the process of reconciling the number of ballots cast at each precinct and the number of people who voted at each precinct.
So, yes, you are either lying or brainwashed, because, even though you have been told this numerous time, you continue to try an treat the crediting system as the reconciliation system.
Stop lying.
D @ 40
I live in King Co. so
(
So what? They may not have had the highest % of error rate, but due to it’s size, the largest number of errors….BIG DIFFERENCE
So who’s the liar? you
Again, so what?
The errors and kind of errors (Dead people, double voting, fictitious voters) still exist and the county admits it.
Again, I am not arguing the 2004 election…
I am simply stating, with evidence, (see link above) truthfully that King Co admits it’s issues and casts doubts on it’s process.
So D, Quit Drinking the Cool Aid man!!
@39 Give it a fucking rest already. Your lies have been debunked countless times. Nobody still believes them except you.
The only election fraud in 2004 was George W. Bush firing John McKay for refusing to commit prosecutorial fraud to advance the GOP’s partisan interests.
@40 You’re arguing with an eggplant.
@41 “So what? They may not have had the highest % of error rate, but due to it’s size, the largest number of errors….BIG DIFFERENCE
So who’s the liar? you”
Wait a minute here. It’s the RATE of error that matters, jackass. According to your fuzzy logic, a county with 1,000 voters and 10 misplaced ballots runs a better election system than a county with 1,000,000 voters and 100 misplaced ballots. Not!
Right Stuff @41
I also live in King County.
“So what? They may not have had the highest % of error rate, but due to it’s size, the largest number of errors….BIG DIFFERENCE”
Here is how retarded your suggestion is. Suppose, in 2004, King County had screwed up 2,662 voter credits and Garfield County had screwed up 1,331 voter credits. Who is worse?
Well…King county has certainly screwed up MORE, but it turns out that they properly credited voters 99.7% correctly. Garfield? Fewer error, but they screwed up every single credit–that is, 0% done correctly.
If you had to decide whether to hire the (fictitious) person doing the work in King County or Garfield County, who would you choose? The one who screwed up 0.3% of the time or the one who fucked up every single time?
“So who’s the liar? you”
What the bloody fuck?!? My statement was entirely factual.
“[“error rate in KC far below rates found elsewhere” ]Again, so what?”
Just offering the facts for some context.
“The errors and kind of errors (Dead people, double voting, fictitious voters) still exist and the county admits it.”
And, no doubt it always will…but it happens in all counties of any size. But in 2004, King County shared Washington State’s excellent record for highly accurate elections (relative to other states).
[UPDATE: Even little ol’ Garfield county didn’t escape it. In 2004, they had 1 felon voter out of the 1,331 ballots cast. Grant county took the cake…they had 42 felons voting out of about 26,000 ballots cast…one in 625 people going into the polling booth was a felon voting illegally!
Counties that had a worse felon voting record than King County in 2004? Grant, Yakima, Ferry, Benton, Garfield, and Lewis.
]
“Again, I am not arguing the 2004 election…”
I never said you were. Rather, I am pointing out that your statement that there were more ballots counted than cast in King County is not true.
“I am simply stating, with evidence, (see link above) truthfully that King Co admits it’s issues and casts doubts on it’s process.”
I wasn’t disputing that. I think it is great that KC has used lessons from their elections to develop better systems. That’s simply good management!
“So D, Quit Drinking the Cool Aid man!!”
It isn’t Kool-Aid that inspires me to respond to your factually incorrect statement. It is that your statement is factually incorrect.
Yeah, yeah, it made a great tag line for stirring up the adrenaline of the masses and making them angry. It was a great line for driving the rhetoric, even if it was untrue.
But it is over now. There is no longer any need to perpetuate the lie.
And, quite simply, it is a matter of integrity. I sometimes enjoy reading your comments precisely because you do not always get sucked up into the bullshit. I don’t understand why you cling to that particular lie.
@41 “Dead people, double voting, fictitious voters) still exist and the county admits it.”
Uh no, they don’t, and never did, and the county didn’t admit any such thing because it didn’t exist. A few dead votes? Yeah, the one I remember is a guy who signed and submitted his dead wife’s ballot — and he was a REPUBLICAN who cast TWO votes for Dino Rossi, one more than he was legally entitled to. I hope you’ll agree with me that this voter — not the county, but the voter — committed election fraud and should have gone to jail for it. Other than him, there are no other known “dead votes” I’ve heard of. The voter rolls maintainted by our long-serving REPUBLICAN Secretary of State were a mess, so there were many dead people on the active voter roles, but there’s no evidence any of them voted. Fictitious votes? You guys didn’t find a single one in King County, or anywhere else in Washington state. For all your hoopla about photo ID and all that, there is not a single documented case of anyone anywhere in the United States voting under someone else’s name in any recent election. So, you can stuff that particular lie back up your ass where you pulled it out from. You’re just blowing smoke, eggplant. You’re just recycling the same tired old John Carlson lies. You need to change the channel on your radio dial.
@41 “Again, I am not arguing the 2004 election…”
Every single assertion in your comment is a lie, and this is the biggest lie of all. Of course you’re arguing the 2004 election! Hey, dumbshit, the statute of limitations has expired on that one so give it a fucking rest. Give yourself a fucking rest. You need a rest, and you need to get fucked. If you can’t find a girl willing to do it for you, buy a plastic vagina at a sex toy store and use your right hand to fuck yourself.
@47
But we was robbed! Until King County stops committing fraud and starts electing “Real Americans” their votes shouldn’t count.
@48
What exactly is a “real” American? You either hold US citizenship, or you don’t. Are you suggesting that people which King County voters elected are foreign imposters? Illegal immigrants?
@49
BTW my tounge was firmly in cheek when I wrote that.
@47, 46
Roger,
You don’t have to “put on” your internet tough guy rage for me sir.
Read the article I linked above.
No, I am not arguing the outcome of 2004. I’m arguing that King County elections makes enough mistakes, of their own doing, and admission, to cause some to question the integrity of the system.
Simple as that.
Gov Gregoire is our Gov.
Darryl,
I too think it’s a good thing that KC elections is open about their errors, is open about lessons learned and plans for improvment. Of that we agree.
Koster loses.
Stickney unemployed.
Trolls whimper.
Life is good.
rhp6033,
Puddy ain’t saying “We was robbed”. Not at all. The election results prove the leftist nutjobs of King County can’t figger out their ASSes from their faces, hence they vote for the DUMBOCRAT who frog marches to the CHAIRMAN. Your King County peeps hang from the rafters and howl at the moon leaving guano all over the county. So when your peeps (Puddy knows you live in Everett) can’t balance their budget cuz they continue to vote the same fools in the County Council or when the Seattle mayor makes his next dumb move Goldy cries about, you get what you deserve!
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
Puddy, Rujax, YLB, etc.
Look guys, I am tired of seeing non-open threads devolve into poo-flinging in isolation of any substantive discussion. In the future try to include some discussion from the post or the (on topic) discussion thread.
If you just want to fling poo, go to an open thread.
And I will frown upon superficial comments that are only thrown in as a mechanism to fling poo.
Seriously…the comment threads are supposed to be for discussion about the blog post…except for open threads.
right stuff,
rhp6033 forgets many things every day regarding campaign funds. Puddy gave those two links two weeks ago. You’d think he’d rise above the stupidity of correctnotbright, butt he continues to slide down the mediocrity slope.
1) DUMBOCRATS spent way more in these erections than Republicans. $677 Million to $1,074 Million last time Puddy checked
2) Since Andy Stern, ex-muttonhead of SEUI, and Richard Trumka of AFL-CIO said they were going to unite the unions around the world, how did that Global Progressive Forum and Global New Deal work for this election?
3) We know Unions wasted many Tens of Millions trying to save DUMBOCRATS for the Chairman. How Many times did the Chairman and hair plugs carpet bomb Ohio and failed?
4) We know George Soros gave millions to his favrit web sites and NPR to foment the progressive label. Looks like that was money wasted.
Too bad the real effect on this election by NPR firing Juan Williams just before the election can’t be measured by the affect on more voters to reject DUMBOCRATS. It would be sweet if someone could quantify this moronic move as costing DUMBOCRATS “X” number of seats.
‘sigh’
@58;
Honestly – why would anyone care one way or the other that Juan Williams got fired? Maybe it’s just that I don’t listen to NPR or watch Fox, but really, in the span of everything in my or anyone but Juan Williams life, why should we care?
As far as Koster’s insult of King County election workers – most people I met who worked there identified as Independents; hopefully they will remember that he considers them to be dishonest the next time he runs for something.