HorsesAss.Org

I just got off the phone with King County Council Chair Larry Phillips, and here is the information straight from the horse’s, uh… mouth:

He did NOT receive a notice that his absentee ballot had signature problems.

He does not know if notices were sent to some or all or none of the other 573, but he most definitely did not receive one.

As to how he found his name on the list in the first place, he was very detailed about the circumstances. At a Christmas party last Thursday he was approached by a friend to help out on Sunday to canvass voters whose ballots had not been counted. He showed up at the field office in Fremont (as did fellow Councilmember Dow Constantine), where after first being assigned an area in West Seattle, and then in Carnation, he eventually convinced them to give him an area in his own district. After first familiarizing himself with the maps, he started reading through the names and addresses, and found himself tenth on the list. After finishing his canvassing, he started making phone calls, and well… you know what happened next.

No scandal, no suspicious circumstances… just sheer, dumb luck.

Phillips also emphasized that these are all legal absentee ballots from legal voters that were incorrectly rejected due to a procedural error: election workers should have pulled the paper work when they did not find the signatures on the computer.

So unless you are calling Phillips a liar, enough already of the speculation and conjecture surrounding these 573 ballots. They were rejected by mistake, and discovered by accident… and that is that.

Popular liberal blog Daily Kos has posted a new report from an observer on the floor of the King County recount.

The process is transparent, clear, and it’s working. It is transparent to the point that they sorted their trash publicly, with six observers from each side watching for stray ballots.

The report gives a very detailed accounting of the actual process that is being used to recount the ballots, and the bipartisan way in which the very few problems that have arisen are being resolved. This is recommended reading for both the inconsolable paranoids convinced the election is being stolen from under their noses, as well as the more rational amongst us on both sides of the aisle who have been trying to console the inconsolable with the very reasonable argument that it is nearly impossible to steal anything under this much scrutiny.

I agree wholeheartedly with the closing sentiments of the observer:

For the record, I’ve said here at Kos that this recount makes me sad. It still does; the winner loses by being tainted with the possibility of “stealing” the election, the loser loses because they will feel they were wronged. It’s not anyone’s fault (well, a certain campaign could have been better run, but that’s moot now); it’s just the nature of an election this close. The folks on the Republican side have agreed with me that ultimately, elections this close are lose-lose for both sides, and it’s unfortunate. But in the end, we’re all doing our best to make sure the counts are accurate, and the voters will benefit from that.

As reported widely, the King County Canvassing Board voted 2-1 today to proceed with signature verification on the 573 absentee ballots that had been erroneously rejected when computer records did not have their signatures on file. County Elections Director Dean Logan believes most of the ballots belong to valid, registered voters. Ballots with matching signatures will be brought back before the canvassing board.

The board postponed a decision on what to do with the 22 absentee and provisional ballots recently discovered in the base of voting machines.

Yesterday, GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance repeated the mantra that has characterized his party’s PR campaign since the morning after the election:

Republicans are now “absolutely convinced that King County is trying to steal this election,”

Sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, sometimes couched in legalese or pseudo-statistics, sometimes bluntly vicious… the state GOP and their evil elves on the right-wing blogs have relentlessly pushed the message that the only path to Democratic victory is outright fraud and corruption.

And their PR campaign has been a brilliant success. Even one of the most liberal legislators in the state is apparently cowed by the supposed public perception the Republicans have labored so hard to fabricate:

Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, an attorney who will be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said there is a “popular assumption” that Rossi has won the race, in part because of the Republican’s careful postelection public-relations strategy.

That, he said, will put Democrats “on very, very thin ice with the public” if lawmakers get involved in determining the outcome.

“I would be very, very careful here,” Kline said. “No matter how thoughtful and surgically precise we approached this, if we were seen publicly as trying to steal an election, the ill will we would invite would be worse than four years of Dino Rossi.”

This is shit!

Let’s lay out a few facts here:

A) Statute called for an automatic machine recount, and allows for this hand recount as the final tally. Therefore, Rossi has not won anything.

B) If the 573 legitimate ballots — erroneously disqualified because election workers failed to check the signatures against the original records — had been counted the first time around, it would be Gregoire who would have come out of the mandatory machine recount with a 40-some vote lead… and it would have been Rossi trying to overturn the election by paying for a hand recount.

C) There are approximately 3000 additional ballots that have been disqualified in King County, because unlike some other counties, election workers actually did their job and matched signatures. The vast majority of these are legitimate ballots from legitimately registered voters, whose signatures failed to match those on record, or failed to sign their ballots at all. While the rules may in the end disqualify these ballots, the intent of these voters remains intact: a majority of voters who cast ballots for governor most likely did not choose Dino Rossi.

D) There has been no documented evidence provided of a single incident of fraud or corruption.

So… when Republicans claim that Democrats are trying to “steal this election”, the first thing I ask is, “from whom?”

Had election workers not erroneously disenfranchised those 573 voters, Christine Gregoire would now be the Governor-elect, and Dino Rossi would be the usurper. Okay, shit happens. But more disgusting is the GOP rant that Democrats are trying to overturn the will of the people. Gimme a break! In an election whose margin of victory is too far within the voting technology’s margin of error to provide confidence that we can ever accurately determine the results, such a claim is just downright insulting. And in light of the thousands of voters from Democratic stronghold King County who were disenfranchised on technicalities, it is at least as reasonable to argue that the majority of legal voters intended to elect Gregoire.

Are Democrats trying to take the governorship away from Dino Rossi? Absolutely. But they are not trying to steal anything from the people.

My second question is, “how” are Democrats supposedly stealing this election? By making their case before the Supreme Court, and losing? By counting ballots that should have been counted the first time around? By asking for a hand recount they shouldn’t have had to ask for in first place, that has uncovered hundreds of additional Rossi votes without complaint?

Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to “change the rules in the middle of the game.” But A) this is not a game, and B) if they are attempting to “change the rules” they are doing so by the rules already in place. Statute gives canvassing boards the discretion during a recount to fix any counting and canvassing errors they discover, and that is what Dems are now asking the counties to do.

You want to argue that there has been too much sloppiness and error by election workers in King County, have at it. But it has all disadvantaged Democrats, both in the vote count, and in the PR battle. If this is corruption, it’s the most incompetent corruption I have ever seen.

Yeah, I forgot… us Democrats are all a bunch of liars and cheats, with a long tradition of using electoral fraud to cling to what little power we have left. Well the only reasonable thing to say in response is… fuck you!

I mean it. Every single one of you blinded-by-the-right Rossifarian wingnuts, desperately searching for some enemy to validate your anger… the next time you write an unsupported comment here accusing Democrats of fraud and corruption and malfeasance and vote-stealing and pig-fucking or whatever… remember, you are saying this about ME, personally! And from here on out, I intend to take it personally, and respond in kind.

The truth is, the Republicans knew on election night that the governor’s race was going to be a crap shoot, and their efforts have been as much about delegitimizing a potential Gregoire administration as it has been about assuring a Rossi one. This isn’t about stealing elections, it’s about both sides playing political hardball. And what’s really pissing off Republicans, is that WA state Democrats aren’t just rolling over like their national counterparts.

A big thank you to The Seattle Times for the public service of posting the list of rejected King County ballots online!

My vote apparently counted… how about yours?

(FYI, the most likely surname to be disqualified was Johnson, with 17 rejected ballots. I guess those dicks just don’t know how to vote.)

The Washington State Supreme Court unanimously rejected the Democrat’s petition to establish uniform standards for conducting the hand recount, and order counties to recanvass rejected ballots.

I’m disappointed, but not surprised.

Here is something to chew on for all those Republicans, “Dinocrats” and weak-kneed liberals who argued that Gregoire should have gracefully conceded after the machine recount: if those 561 erroneously rejected absentee ballots had been counted in the first place, it is Gregoire who likely would have come out with a 40-some-vote lead after the first recount, not Rossi.

Chew on that for a moment.

At the risk of drawing a baseball bat to the head from the mathematical guidos who run the numbers racket over at (un)Sound Politics, I thought I’d comment again on their wholly unscientific enterprise of predicting the outcome of our ongoing hand recount.

In an effort to prepare his “fellow Republicans for some possible bad news”, Jim Miller presents the somewhat plausible (though totally unsupported) premise that random counting errors are not random at all, positing that “people tend to make mistakes that favor themselves.”

And so I wondered if the current results — an admittedly small sample representing only 20% of total ballots cast — might support Jim’s thesis. Early returns have tended to come from Republican strongholds where Rossi won handily, thus he currently leads the recount 56% to 41%. If Jim is correct, that some of the newly found votes are the result of nonrandom bias, then Rossi’s lead in these new votes should be somewhat greater than his lead in the overall totals.

Out of 338 aggregate new votes, Rossi has gained 190, while Gregoire has gained 144. Pull out your spreadsheets if you wish, but off the top of my head that comes to about 56% for Rossi, 42% for Gregoire… almost exactly the same percentage as the overall totals. Apparently, these new votes have been distributed randomly between the candidates.

Of course, Jim might attribute this lack of discrepancy to the fact that Republicans are honest and Democrats are not. (I suspect he probably will.)

But more interesting to me is what this says about the statistical contortions his fellow numerologist Stefan is using to reinforce the notion that Rossi has already won… whatever the final vote count. Stefan knows how to write, so I can only assume that his long-winded recitations of obscure Excel functions are intended to confuse the reader, while fulfilling an apparently urgent need to constantly reassure himself of how smart he is.

So rather than torturing you with pages of calculations, permit me to propose a mathematical shortcut, based on the premise that the majority of these newly counted votes are not the result of human error during the recount, but rather, random tabulation error during the machine count. Since the overall vote count is roughly a 50-50 split, can’t we assume that statewide, the newly found votes should also split roughly 50-50?

Add in the 561 new votes in King County, and one would think that Gregoire stands a fair chance of winning the election.

Of course… all of this is complete bullshit, because there are so many factors that could screw up any projection in such a close race. Did King County already vet much of its discernible “under vote” during its more thorough recount? Are there more surprises to be uncovered in King or elsewhere? Will the King cavass board re-examine rejected ballots due to court mandate or public and party pressure? Will the rest of the new votes break as predictably as the first 20% have?

I’ve got no idea. And you know what? Neither does Stefan or Jim.

According to a release on their website, King County Elections Director Dean Logan will ask the canvassing board to amend their certified results to include “approximately” 561 absentee ballots mistakenly rejected because their signatures were not on file in the county’s voter registration system. Original registration records should have been retrieved to verify signatures.

If these ballots break along similar percentages as the rest of the county vote, that should amount to about a 100 vote pickup for Gregoire.

Even as the state Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments (1:30PM, C-SPAN2) on whether the gubernatorial re-recount should include a recanvassing of ballots previously rejected, the case may have already become moot.

As reported today in The Seattle Times, the rejected ballots included that of King County Council Chair Larry Phillips, whose absentee ballot was tossed because his signature wasn’t on file with county elections officials. Philips voted absentee because he was campaigning for John Kerry in Ohio; had he voted at the polls as is his custom, his vote would have counted.

Ooops… there goes the GOP argument that voters who had their ballots rejected were either stupid or didn’t follow directions.

King County Elections Director Dean Logan said he didn’t know how many ballots might have been rejected for the same reason. Election workers will spend the day looking for other ballots that were rejected for the same reason, and present them to the canvassing board.

As I noted last week, Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed has already stated that canvassing boards have some discretion to re-examine ballots:

Reed said county canvassing boards could re-examine some rejected ballots “if there is a problem brought to their attention,” But, he said, “they really don’t have the authority to on their own decide that not only are we going to do a recount, but we’re also going to systematically go back” and recanvass. That could change if a systematic error was discovered, he said, adding he thought that was unlikely.

If Phillips was registered to vote, but had no signature on file, how could it be anything but a bureaucratic error? So I guess the question is, what exactly does Reed mean by “systematic”? If a number of other ballots were rejected for similar reasons, isn’t that systematic? And if there are systematic errors in one part of the system, doesn’t that call into question the entire process?

GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance would like you to believe that raising these issues leads us down the road towards disaster:

“The Democrats are asking for far more than counting a few ballots that were missed the first time. They want them to look at every ballot that was rejected the first time. It would destroy our election process.”

But explain to me how double-checking the legitimacy of a ballot before discarding it would “destroy our election process”?

It is time for King County Democrats to pressure the Democratically-controlled canvassing board to agree to re-examine all the rejected ballots, before the Supremes hand down their decision. Thousands of ballots have been tossed out by low-level election workers, and these voters deserve that have their ballots reviewed by the canvassing board before they are summarily disenfranchised.

———-

UPDATE:
Watching the oral arguments before the Supremes, the SOS attorney pointed out the following statute, 29A.60.221:

Whenever the canvassing board finds that there is an apparent discrepancy or an inconsistency in the returns of a primary or election, the board may recanvass the ballots or voting devices in any precincts of the county. The canvassing board shall conduct any necessary recanvass activity on or before the last day to certify the primary or election and correct any error and document the correction of any error that it finds.

So my point remains, if the GOP doesn’t want the rest of the state to recanvass, that’s fine by me. But I think enough errors have been uncovered in King County to warrant that the rejected ballots be brought before the canvassing board… for the first time.

I’ve been awfully quiet about Tim Eyman recently, and for a number of reasons, not the least of which being my reluctance to be pigeonholed an “Eyman critic” at a time when Tim is gradually transitioning to the role of a marginal political figure.

But I have also been loathe to publicly discuss Timmy’s proposed performance audits initiative in any detail, for fear he might cull something constructive from my criticism. I’ve never subscribed to the theory that Tim is some sort of a political genius… but he ain’t dumb. And he certainly doesn’t need my help in perfecting the initiative’s policy or rhetoric prior to its January filing date.

That said (or not said), I agree 100 percent with the sentiment expressed in an editorial today in The Seattle P-I: “Beware of magic bullets.” Surprise… Tim is pitching a very simple fix to a very complex public policy issue, cloaked as usual in his familiar anti-government spiel.

I support the concept of performance audits — in theory — perhaps even to a greater extent than currently conducted by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC). In fact, I would like to see JLARC extend the audits from state agencies to tax exemptions.

But once the public learns of the true costs of Eyman’s overreaching initiative, and how little in savings we can reasonably expect to see in return… well… I don’t suppose it will make much of a difference one way or the other, as I sincerely doubt that Tim can raise the kind of money or grassroots fervor necessary to get this dog onto the ballot.

More on this subject after the New Year.

I’d like to add a little levity back into this forum by taking a moment to turn away from the tedious subject of re-recounts, to touch once again upon my eternal torment.. No, I’m not talking about reading the comments on (un)Sound Politics… I’m talking about the widespread belief that upon Christ’s imminent return, I shall be cast wailing and screaming into the pits of Hell.

When I last wrote on this subject a couple weeks back (“Have you heard the good news? I’m going to Hell!“), I generated some thoughtful and not-so-thoughtful criticism, ranging from those who accused me of demonizing Christians, to those who bluntly stated that the “truth hurts,” I am going to Hell.

But the critique to which I gave the most consideration was that I had misinterpreted Revelations. The truth is, I’ve only read the New Testament once, and that was twenty years ago for an Ethno-History class in college. And so I read with great fascination Tim Appelo’s cover story in the current Seattle Weekly: “Is Bush the Antichrist?”

Appelo delves into the history of the Antichrist and modern apocalyptic theology that I was only peripherally aware of. But while Appelo makes it clear that these themes are not part of main stream Christian theology — and Rev. Rich Lang of Seattle’s Trinity United Methodist Church goes so far as to make accusations of “heresy” — it is hard for me to dismiss these “heretics”, knowing that they control the White House.

“The progressive church should bring back–and this sounds so crazy–the word ‘heresy.’ The end times theology and this other thing called Dominionism or Christian Reconstruction–those are heresies.” Lang says not to believe Christian Coalition leader–turned–Whore of Enron–turned Bush/Cheney campaign lieutenant Ralph Reed when he claims the Christian right has no plans to upend the Constitution and impose its religion on civic life. “He’s a liar,” says Lang. “Dominionism is the notion that God has given the dominion, the governance of the world, to the church. And so Christians literally are born to rule, by force if necessary, to bring the Kingdom of God on Earth. I believe that the theology that drives the Bush administration affirms this.” When Falwell preached, “We must take back what is rightfully ours,” his ambitions did not stop at U.S. borders. This is a Church of a Law Unto Itself.

Years ago, after an especially harrowing driving experience in Boston, that involved my (now ex-)wife angrily driving the wrong way up a freeway exit, she turned to me and said, “I put the fear of God into you didn’t I?” To which I shakily replied: “It’s not God I’m afraid of.”

That is also my reaction to those Evangelicals so enraptured with The Rapture, so eager to leave people like me behind to our imminent and eternal damnation. I do not, cannot, will not accept Christ as my savior. If these people so fervently believe that I will be punished for this sin in the next world, how can I expect them to respect my rights as an American in this world?

Dismiss them as wacky cultists, whose time will pass, if you wish. Just remember that 2000 years ago, that’s what my Jewish ancestors probably said about the early Christians.

While the numerologists over at Sound Politics are busy job counseling prospective Gregoire nominees, I thought I’d take a look at a single number: 271. That’s the total number of additional or subtracted votes counties have reported thus far. (In fact, the total number is likely quite a bit higher, as subtracted votes at the precinct level would have canceled out additional votes in other precincts.)

With only about 14% of the counties reporting, this projects to about 2000 changed votes statewide.

And so to all those who argued that Rossi won the first two counts, thus there was no need for a third, I ask you: are you really comfortable saying that Rossi won by 42 votes… give or take a couple a thousand?

The Rossi campaign and their cheerleaders on the neocon blogs have made much ado about a 1996 memo from the Secretary of State’s office that supposedly shows Christine Gregoire’s “hypocrisy” on the issue of whether recounts should include re-examining the signatures on rejected provisional ballots. This is the issue at the heart of the Dems’ lawsuit, and if this memo truly proved Gregoire had changed her stance, it would certainly hurt her in the court of public opinion, if not a court of law.

But the memo doesn’t prove anything of the sort. Let’s take a look at the paragraph in question:

We are advised by the Attorney General that state law makes no provision for the challenge of ballots or voters (as provided in RCW 29.10.125) during the recount. The recount procedure provided for by statute is a mechanical function of re-tallying the ballots cast and accepted as valid by the precinct election officers or the canvassing board with respect to the inclusion or exclusion of a particular ballot during the canvass is not open to question during the recount.

The memo doesn’t say when they were advised, or by which Attorney General, nor in what context. The Gregoire campaign claims that this advice was given by the office of her Republican predecessor, Ken Eikenberry. This makes sense when you consider the memo in question concerned routine guidelines for conducting an election; it was not in response to any existing debate over recounts, so it would have been unlikely that Republican Secretary of State Ralph Munro, in 1996 an old hand at the job, would have suddenly sought a new opinion directly from the AG — indeed, no evidence has been provided claiming such an opinion was solicited.

In fact, the last time this issue arose was in 1990, during the very close race in the 24th Legislative District that was eventually decided by five votes. Ken Eikenberry and Ralph Munro were both in their respective offices at that time, and it seems plausible that the advice expressed in the 1996 memo stems from that earlier disputed election.

Neocon apologists like Stefan on (un)Sound Politics would place the burden of disproof on Gregoire, with absurd double-negatives like “I haven’t yet seen specific information that the AG office in 1996 had no knowledge of the opinion upon which Munro was relying.” And I haven’t seen evidence that Stefan is not the reincarnation of Joe McCarthy… but that doesn’t mean he is. (Then again, it doesn’t mean he isn’t.)

But regardless of who gave the advice and when, a close reading of the memo calls into question whether it specifically contradicts the Democratic lawsuit at all. The paragraph’s two sentences should be understood as two independent clauses. The first sentence clearly reflects the advice of an “AG”, but it would be presumptuous to infer that the second sentence is anything but a conclusion by the SOS. The AG’s advice is thus limited to the issue of whether RCW 29.10.125 makes a “provision for the challenge of ballots and voters” during a recount.

A literal reading of current state law suggests the AG’s advice is on target, because the statute makes no provision one way or the other. The RCW says “recount” and it says “all ballots cast”, but it fails to define either term. Yes, there is no provision that defines how a party might challenge ballots during a recount; but neither is there a provision that absolutely prevents canvassing boards from re-examining ballots on their own accord… an opinion that current SOS Sam Reed seemed to share in the TNT yesterday.

Oh, and by the way… the advice in the memo was based on an interpretation of RCW 29.10.125. Problem is, there is no RCW 29.10.125 on the books anymore, so the accusation of hypocrisy becomes shakier still in light of the fact that the law itself has changed in the intervening years.

On a curious side note… guess who was the Assistant AG assigned to the SOS at the time of the 1990 dispute? None other than Tim Eyman’s attorney, Jim Johnson, newly elected to the state Supreme Court on the strength of a familiar, alliterative name, and a half million dollars of BIAW money.

I mention this because it raises the very important issue of process. AGs and SOSs don’t generally give this kind of advice or write these kind of memos on their own; their staff handles it. So even if there was communication between the two offices in 1996, it’s unlikely that it would have been called to Gregoire’s attention on an issue that appeared to be settled practice as recently as 1990. Remember, Assistant AGs (and SOS staff) stay on from one administration to the next, and an Eikenberry holdover would have no reason to expect the office to reconsider this issue without a recent controversy.

And just to be sure I’m not accused of hypocrisy myself, I’d like to present a quote from a screed I wrote last year in which I repeatedly attacked the Attorney General for selectively seeking an injunction against my “Horse’s Ass” initiative: “And of course, wherever I refer to the ‘Attorney General,’ I am usually referring to her office.” Even I didn’t have the temerity to believe that my joke initiative was on her radar. The injunction was the work of an underling, as is most of the work of the office.

So what we have here is a eight-year-old memo, probably written by an SOS staffer, which included routine advice which may or may not have been given in 1996, or in 1990, by an Assistant AG in either Gregoire’s or Eikenberry’s office, about a vague lack of provision in a narrow portion of a statute that’s not even on the books anymore. And we’re asked to accept this as damning evidence of Gregoire’s contemptible hypocrisy?

Puh-leaaaase.

If Ralph Munro comes out tomorrow and states that he personally got this advice from Gregoire herself, then I’ll give this memo more credence. Otherwise it’s little more than gossip, hearsay and conjecture.

I don’t intend to obsessively dwell on the results of the hand recount as they slowly dribble in, unless there’s some kind of surprise to report. We all know that the prize is King County, and they’ll surely be the last to report. It’s kind of like watching the Seahawks on Monday Night Football.

Instead, I’ve added a scoreboard to the top of the page, which I will update at the end of each day, and whenever else I feel like it. I’ve provided a link to the results page on the Secretary of State’s web site, which will almost always be at least as current as mine.

As for the results thus far, it’s mostly been smaller, rural counties that have reported — less than 5% of the vote, and predominantly Rossi country. Too early to discern any trends.