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.
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I don’t get it…the courts was supposed to be a left leaning tool desinged to help the democrats steal the election. What went wrong?
What an idiotic comment, Tom.
The court declined to get involved in forcing the counties to recanvass. All this talk of election stealing is B.S.
The court felt it was basically being asked to legislate in the middle of a recount and that it could not get involved. Which is understandable.
No suprise, they dont need the votes now that the 561 are “found” in King. Dean Logan musthave been promised a hundred virgins in Democrat heaven.
Comment by Jenny— 12/14/04 @ 10:27 am
Good pithy summary. Now, what you think – those rejected ballots that Logan wants to recanvass readmissable?
Slighty OT – I really agree with Jon Stewart on this. I’m constantly amazed that Republics, who control the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate and very nearly the Federal courts constantly complains about being marginalized or how elections are being “stolen”.
Pot, kettle, black.
Josef- those 561 ballots will be “in” under the safety valve portion of the law- one of the reasons the Court seemed to useto show it didn’t need to step in…
In my mind the court has ruled that they won’t force the counties to recanvass, but they also didn’t specifically say that counties are forbidden from examining rejected ballots. So my take on the situation is that votes that are found by county canvassing boards to have been improperly rejected (e.g. the 561 in King) will be counted, but there will be no wholesale investigation across the state of every rejected ballot.
Angry Voter- there are one hundred Democratic virgins?
I know you’re trying to be funny Jim, but c’mon. Republicans like to pretend their all abstinent until marriage, but it’s pretty clear they’re as debauched (on the whole) as the rest of us :)
Lordy, how did you know what went on at College Republican shindigs…? :)
At least in my day, we weren’t ripping off old widows!
Jim, Good point.
Comment by Jim King— 12/14/04 @ 10:41 am
Ut-oh…
I think turnabout is fair play…
The states that voted for Bush this year have the highest divorce rates and the highest teen pregnacy rates. Just consult the US Census Bureau. The state with one of the lowest divorce rates is Massachusetts. Now, isn’t that interesting?
Enough of this “morals” garbage. It’s just talk. The conservative evangelicals can’t even figure out that it’s their states with the most dysfunctional family problems.
The teen pregnancy rate, especially, speaks for itself.
Seems a little weak to quote all the good reasons voters and their votes are important and then say, be we the most important judical entity in the state- the court of final appeal can and should do nothing. The King Co self correction let them off the hook a bit too.
Too bad Sanders was not there, possible dissent.
Back to the hand recount of some of the ballots—. OH, BUT not those over there. They are off limits even if if they are full of and abound with mistakes.
We see no compelling reason why this hand count should be truly accurate and protect voters right, even as we prognosticate bout how himportnt votin g is in a democracy.
Back to work, more murders to let out.
Bob does make an interesting point – what are the limits of the recount now? If county canvassing boards find a stack of uncounted ballots or ones that were (as a group) rejected, I presume they can count those. But is there a hard limit (i.e. don’t go picking up every ballot from the rejected pile). Or is it up to each county?
As I’ve previously stated, I think it has clearly been shown that there were “systematic” problems with the canvassing of absentee and provisional ballots in King County, and thus King would be well within the statute’s “safety-valve” if they were to go back and look for more problems. Those 561 wouldn’t have been found if they had not looked for them.
The R’s might sue if King attempted what amounted to a recanvassing, but I doubt the court would intervene there either.
But Jenny- I’ve got plenty of jokes about them Southerners- hell, some are my relatives- that “explain” the teen pregnancy rate- we was a joking here… At least I was…
So I won’t get into the argument about having to have marriages before divorces being one reason some states have low divorce rates… But the gay divorce rate is now climbing in Massachusetts…
(Hint- that’s a joke, even if true)
And ya’ll should see the other places in the Matrix where they are desperately trying to figure out how to block the count of those 561 votes… The psuedo-lawyers are rapidly overwhelming the numerologists…
Remeber 880,000 ballots all hand counted, yet to speak. There- I predict, Gregoire will add enough with the 561- To WIN. Not by much, the bets here are less than 89
Sylvia Brown and I are working on the exact amount.
Kickers are Thurston, Pierce and Snohomish- then BAM and BOOM, KingCo.
There is a reason, can I say this, the R’s are having ass cramps and major migraines..
Comment by Jenny— 12/14/04 @ 11:31 am
Smart point. We may disagree about the Governors’ race, but I think you make a great case for Kerry for me :-). Thanks and God Bless…
Comment by Bob from Boeing— 12/14/04 @ 11:52 am
Justice Sanders recursed himself probably because he had the full help and backing of the GOP, plus according to BIAW BUT not verified by MSM (mainstream media) him and Gregoire are in a spat…
Bless him anyway… he stayed out. Good man.
Goldy – I can see that you believe King County would be within its rights to go back and look for more systemic problems, but will they? Will other counties?
Anyone placing any bets on what happens if Gregoire wins this recount (besides Chris Vance going apoplectic)?
I don’t believe they will, but perhaps we should try a grass roots email and phone call campaign?
While I totally understand the Supreme Court’s decision, I have a hard time understanding how King County could not go back and look at all the votes it rejected (even just a quick once over). I mean, 561 votes is a big deal. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if the same council member who had his vote rejected isn’t pushing for that (although I haven’t heard of that).
I know that some rejected votes are being re-counted, right? That’s how we find the ones the machines mistakenly reject. Frankly, this is a little confusing. Where’s the blog post explaining county by county (not just numbers) all the new “stuff” that’s been found during this recount?
Goldy- I thnk that where we are at, in terms of counting additional ballots, is that county canvassing boards should consider (under the law they may consider- but are not obligated to) clearly erroneous decisions. The problems that the Democrats have is that most of the ballots rejected were not rejected for clearly erroneous reasons, but for reasons with which the Democrats disagree.
“Clearly erroneous” borders on “arbitrary and capricious” as a standard- it is a tough hurdle. The King 561 make that hurdle, as do the Whatcom 7- as did the Snohomish 224. Think of it as the “even Rossi would have to agree because he couldn’t disagree with a straight face” standard (I wouldn’t subject you to the Vance standard). Tough, but not impossible.
But time is running out in all thirty-nine counties for anyone to find and correct errors- once the manual recount is certified (I think in each county) the opportunity to correct error closes.
After that, it is Chapter 29A.68 RCW for contested elections…
jcricket- most votes that are being “found” (think Kitsap 154) were not “rejected” votes- they are on ballots that were accepted, but the machine couldn’t read them. Now they are being read. Think of them as “unread votes” or “improperly read” votes.
That is different than “rejected ballots”, which have never been submitted for counting.
Thanks Jim – that is a good clarification. So most of the additional/changed votes are from ballots that have already been fed through the machines twice.
However, there are some ballots, either from the newly discovered piles or from piles of previously rejected ballots. These new ballots have never been run through a machine, right? They were either disqualified before that, or accidentally misplaced. Seems fair that any known piles of rejected ballots should at least be open to a quick once-over, no?
Well, jcricket- that’s a recanvass. Some think we should go there. I disagree. The Supremes refused to require the counties to go there, and so far the counties ARE refusing to go there.
And IF we went there, I have no doubt the GOP would sue…
Middle ground- If the parties get the lists of rejected ballots, and scour them for the same kind of “clearly erroneous” errors, then brought them to the attention of the canvassing boards? Of course, they should have been doing that all along- it’s called monitoring…
Your last solution (middle ground) makes sense to me. If the parties see a clear pattern of rejection because of erroneous error (“hmm, all these rejected ballots seem to have the same last name. Maybe someone hates people named Nguyen”) – the counties should use their discretion.
Not ideal, but better than just letting a pile sit there until after the recount is done and we discover 2000 “obviously legal” votes have been rejected because the election worker sneezed.
Well in King County, the rejected ballots included 8 Nguyens, 4 Trans, 3 Phans, 2 Phams, and one Tran-Nguyen.
By comparison, there were 17 Johnsons. I guess those dicks just don’t know how to vote.
Goldy – what’s funny is that I wrote my post before I read the list on the Seattle Times web site. I just knew the “same last name” thing would probably bite someone, especially people with “ethnic” last names.
Surprising that the Smiths vote OK, but the Johnson’s are so dumb :)
How many of those Johnsons are from Ballard? Too much lutefisk? The difference between a sea lion and a Norweigian?
And thats when I realized they werent going to look at the 27 8×10 colored glossy pictures with the circles and arrows…..