Ten days after the election the votes are still being tallied, but the outcome only grows murkier with every passing day, setting the stage for a constitutional crisis that could grind our nation’s capital to a halt. What looked like a comfortable margin on election night has been shrinking steadily ever since, and with over 7,000 ballots left to count, and more arriving everyday, the lead could still changes.
That’s the sort of nightmare scenario that Secretary of State Sam Reed and his surrogates argue could only happen here in Washington state with our allegedly “absurd” postmarked by election day ballot deadline, but in fact it’s exactly what is happening in New York state in the hotly contested election for NY-23, only sorta, and not really as dramatically as the headline writers imply.
Trailing by 5,335 votes on election night, with 93 percent of the ballots counted, right-wingnut Doug Hoffman conceded the race, prompting Democrat Bill Owens to be swiftly sworn in to the House, just in time to cast a crucial vote in favor of healthcare reform. But as ballots continued to be tallied and errors were uncovered during recanvassing, Owens lead has shrunk to little more than 3,000 votes, with as many as 10,000 ballots remaining, raising the specter that the wrong man has been sworn into Congress.
Of course, the chance of Hoffman making up a 3,000 vote gap with so few ballots remaining is just shy of nil, but that hasn’t stopped the media from playing up the drama of what admittedly would be a really juicy story… you know, in the unlikely event it turned out to be true. Nor would this be the first time House leadership rushed to swear in the alleged winner of a special election before the results had been officially certified; the Republicans set that precedent.
But I find the hyperbolic coverage of this story most interesting, not just because it once again illustrates the point that shit happens, regardless of your election deadlines, but because it also clearly demonstrates how Reed and his surrogates are just plain wrong on one of their most basic “facts.”
Yesterday on KUOW, Reed once again stated that “most states” require ballots be received by election day, an assertion that has been repeated in media reports, but which is simply not true. New York state, for example, requires that ballots be postmarked the day before election day, and received no later than seven days after. But ballots from overseas citizens and uniformed service members are accepted as late as 13 days following the election, meaning that valid ballots will continue to arrive in NY-23 as late as next Monday.
Yes, there have been a couple excruciatingly close and drawn out contests here in Washington, but as rare as they are, they’re far from unique to our state and our mail-in voting system. Democracy is messy. Deal with it.
Here’s another counterexample for you:
US Senate, New Hampshire, 1974 … still the closest election ever in the Senate, and still the longest gap between Election Day and the swearing-in of the winner(?).
Obviously, there was no electronic voting. In fact, New Hampshire still votes entirely on paper, though nowadays some of that paper is opscan forms fed through machines. And the only absentee ballots, then and now, are those that are actively requested by individuals who must give a reason why they can’t vote at the polls on Election Day.
FWIW, Hoffman did not win in NY-23. There were actually only about 5400 absentee ballots returned, and many of them were filled out prior to Scozzafava’s withdrawal. Unless those ballots came in at least 80% for Hoffman — in what was then a three-way race — Owens is the legitimately-elected Congressman.
Hey Goldy
You don’t know how happy it makes me to see that you follow Brad Blog. I wish more people and more political bloggers would do the same.
I know this only touches tangentially o the topic, but without regard to the deadline in place, whay the hell are people leaving voting until the last minute?
Waiting to see which candidate might get caught in a scandal? Waiting for the very latest and most desperate of the attack ads?
If you don’t know what you believe in and which candidate best represents those points of view, screw you.
Hey “prefer transparent verfiable elections”,
Brad Friedman might be even more of a self-important conspiracy theorist than Bev Harris when it comes to electoral issues. It’s a close call.
His idiocy, incorrectness, and outright destructiveness in the 2008 New Hampshire primary were absolutely outrageous.
With their ravings, they’ve both set back the cause of real voting reform by years.
In Washington – someone cannot be sworn in until the election is certified. Obviously that is not the case in New York! I agree – people – get your act together and vote in a reasonable time – you are basically given two weeks! REALLY!
Poster Child @ #3: Well, things DO happen shortly before election day.
In the NY 23rd one of the three candidates withdrew from the race, which might have an effect on which of the remaining candidates voters would choose. This sort of situation happened pretty often in the presidential primaries, frustrating to those who had cast their vote early and now felt like their vote had been “wasted”.
And a candidate does die from time-to-time. Depending upon state law, this might affect the outcome.
@3
First of all, why NOT vote on election day?
Second, a deadline means you have to finish the task before a certain time. If your teacher marked you down for not turning in your term paper today even though it’s not due until tomorrow, you’d be irate.
And finally, getting fast results is nice, but it’s way down on the list of things required for a fair election.
“N in Seattle” –
What “conspiracy” did I allege in New Hampshire? Or any time or anywhere for that matter?
And, as long as we’re on the subject, what was I either incorrect or destructive about in terms of my coverage of the abhorrent version of “democracy” as carried out in NH’s primary last year?
I look forward to your reply, unless you prefer to simply offer unsubstantiated ad homimen attacks instead of actual substance.
And finally, “With their ravings, they’ve both set back the cause of real voting reform by years.” Really? How so? Was it due to the actual changes in NH’s election procedures that resulted from my, Bev and scores of other EI advocates watchdogging and advocacy during that horribly run election?
How has “real voting reform” been set back by the various policies that have changed, and voting systems decertified due, etc. due to such reporting, be it in NH or anywhere else in the nation??
I’m not offended by your silly attacks, but I would welcome your substance to back them up because I’m unaware of what the hell you’re talking about.
Thanks!
Brad
Brad, I don’t really want to go through the blizzard of crap you slung around New Hampshire. All the paranoia about “chain of custody” and “memory cards”, the implication that Diebold rigged the opscan vote, the complete bullshit about “reversed counts” between hand-counted and opscan towns.
I used to live and vote in New Hampshire, and I know that they run a top-notch and verifiable election procedure. Every single ballot is on paper, whether it’s counted by a scanner or a bunch of people.
The bullshit about differences between machine-count and hand-count towns was refuted from the very start. The pattern — the same one that occurred in 2004 — was that the cities in the southeastern part of the state (Manchester, Nashua, Derry, and such) are both the more conservative areas and the areas where scanners are more likely to be used. The phenomenon was clearly one of regional differences, not due to voting machines.
The recount demonstrated that the small errors in the count were human errors. Nothing malevolent, just mistakes made by fallible humans. It happens.
N in Seattle said:
Given your previous comment, and the embarrassing points made in the agove, I suspect you wouldn’t.
Yes. Tin-hattery, all of it! Why worry about “memory cards” (enjoyable “quotes” there, btw), when manipulation of memory cards by computer scientists and security experts in one academic and/or state-sponsored study after another has found them among the easiest way to manipulate the results of an election — on the very machines used in NH, btw — and as seen in an Emmy-nominated documentary film. Paranoia, that. Why bother to be concerned about it? Especially when nobody to date has been able to explain the disparity between pre-election polls and election results in NH (or, have they, but just haven’t told me about it, because all I’ve seen is conjecture — of the paranoia-type you mention, actually). And when the company with a criminal record that handled the memory cards, LHS, has admitted to having done so illegally during elections, why worry?
And why concern oneself with that silly “chain of custody” thing, when ballots were stored in open boxes and such. Conspiracy theories! All of it! Democracy protects and oversees itself, don’t ya know? Where do you think we live, Iran? Afghanistan? Florida? Ohio? New Hampshire?
Who implied that? I didn’t.
What bullshit about it? Perhaps you’re confusing me with another Brad?
You seem to be completely uninformed about the problems with computer tabulated paper ballots. If you’re determined to be, I suspect I won’t be convincing you otherwise in a single comment, in anycase. And if you think the NH elections are “top-notch”, I’d hate to see what you consider to be disastrous.
Yeah, I know. By me. You sure you’re talking about the same Brad? Have you ever actually read my blog? Or do you just rely on what fools like Dana Houle (DHinMI at dKos, a former NH official) lies to you about? If so, you’d get more reliable information from Sean Hannity on these matters, amigo.
I never reported otherwise. But that makes me a conspiracy theorist?!
“Small errors” in a partial recount where variances of 4 to 10.6% occurred?! I’ll just hope and pray you’re not an election official, and thank god that there are folks out there who actually give a damn about accurate, transparent, citizen-overseeable democracy, even as you appear not to. Such enormous disparities, whether by malevolence, fallible humans, or merely equipment error all result in elections which do not reflect the will of the voters.
I’m sorry to hear those issues are not important to you, but good luck with that. Don’t worry, we’ll pay attention, if you won’t and don’t seem to care about your own self-governance. You’re welcome. Good lord.
We rented Tropic Thunder the other night and this reminds me of the line:
“It’s kind of political. You gotta take ads out..”
Split my sides. And the Hollyweird agent stuff was the best..