The Seattle P-I reports that the Democrats have sent the GOP a list of 428 felons who cast illegal votes in the November election, mainly from pro-Rossi parts of the state.
Eventually, state Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt said, his side expects to meet or beat the total of 946 felon voters the GOP has claimed in its legal challenge to the election.
What…? In a state where meth labs are popping up faster than Starbucks, you didn’t expect to find a few felons outside of Seattle city limits?
Hopeless Senate hopeful and GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance tried to put the best spin on it:
“The more the better,” Vance said. “They’re just proving our central point, which is that this election was so messed up, there’s no way to tell who won.”
Yeah… and that would be a great central point Chris, if the standard for setting aside the election was uncertainty. But the statute and case law are pretty damn clear that Rossi has to actually prove that Gregoire lost… and that’s why the GOP pinned their hopes on the court accepting a proportional analysis.
Yup, for the past couple of weeks its been proportional analysis this and proportional analysis that… and now that somebody’s bothered to look at the rest of the state for illegal votes, all of a sudden Vance is back to the “it’s a total mess” bullshit. Hoo-boy… sure sounds like an admission of defeat to me.
UPDATE:
And for those of you who don’t trust the P-I, the Seattle Times says the Democrats found 432 felons in 31 counties, including:
65 in Spokane, 55 in Yakima and 35 in Clark. In King County, Democrats say, they found 31 felons from Rossi strongholds.
Now how’d the BIAW Rossi camp miss those 31 felons in King County? They weren’t cherry picking, were they? Naaww… that would be dishonest.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Neat idea…why would a felon or ex felon support republicans? 3 strikes laws, hard time for armed crime…oh I almost forgot the death penalty….use your fucking head for something other than a paperweight, Goldy.
YIPPEE!
This is an Election CONTEST!
Why would the R’s look for any more than they needed to WIN?
Remember, the Dems set the bar when Berendt’s gang went out and gathered those provisional ballot affadavits…remember?
Bawling Berendt..”I spent my whole life making sure EVERY vote is counted” WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Sniffle-Siffle.WAAAAAAAAAH!
This is mighty funny from a Rossi perspective.
Now..can the Dems actually utilize this 12th hour revelation?
And how will the Judge look at these?
Why did the Dems wait so long?
Stay tuned on Monday!
COOL!
Now we only need 48,000 more errors, to make this an average election.
Until then, we have a much cleaner election here, than most others in the u.s. enjoyed.
any accusation of selectivity is bogus after comments like the following have been made.
Ryan Bianchi, communications assistant for the Gregoire campaign, said the canvassers knock on doors and ask if the person is a Gregoire voter. “If they say no, we just tell them to have a nice day,” he said. If they said yes, then they continued with the process.
With a concern for democracy like that, who needs a party system?
November 14, 2004 – Seattle Times
how many errors are there now, 4000?
thats .0015%.
maybe the new math, is different, its been a while since I was in school.
Correct me if I am wrong but aren’t all the previous posters missing the point?
The statistical analysis introduced by the Republican Party ignores voter motivation and simply applies the aggregate precinct results to the total votes cast by felons within that precinct. This analysis predicts that if 10 felons voted in a precinct where the aggregate vote went Rossi by 60% then six of the felons are presumed to have voted Rossi with the actual politics of the felon population ignored.
Under this analysis, the identification of felon voters in heavily Rossi Eastern Washington and in King County precincts that went Rossi only helps the case for Gregoire. What is more, since this analysis is so geographically dependant, demonstrable cherry picking of results for precincts that went to Gregoire only strengthens the argument that the analysis is flawed by design and should be thrown out by the judge.
How did the repubs. decide to equate the felons psyche, with that of the average voter anyway? What led them to this?
Was it the lack of any credible studies done on felon voting patterns, so by default, just said, lets apply it like the general population?
That seems like a large leap, right there. One not likely to be vaulted by bridges.
you’d see this from the Dems too if the shoe was on the other foot, neither party is exempt from trying to win at near all cost. To puul names from a pro-Rossi county would be dumb why help the opposition? (notice I never said Dems will win.)
Chuck @ 2
“Neat idea…why would a felon or ex felon support republicans? 3 strikes laws, hard time for armed crime…oh I almost forgot the death penalty….”
The fact is, we have no empirical evidence to suggest how ex felons vote. Nobody has collected the data.
There are two classes of arguments that are used to support the idea that ex-Felons will vote from Rossi: (1) demographic characteristics, and (2) phychological.
(1) If we use demographic characteristics (an analysis that definitely has some flaws) we find that ex-Felons in Washington are predominately white males without a college education. In the non-felon population, voters with these characteristics tend to vote republican.
(2) The phychological argument says that (A) ex Felons (mostly white, less educated, males in Washington) will vote for a man over a woman, and (B) ex Felons are less likely to vote for the sitting Attorney General.
Hey Dems,
Go read Logan’s and Huennekens’ depositions. And then go read RCW 29A.60.200.
The Canvassing Boards are required to verify the results of the precincts, which they did not. The RCW then makes it clear that the results have to be certified, IF they can be determined with reasonable certainty. Logan and Huennekens both knew that the election results were not determinitstic within reasonable certainty. They both knew that the accounting records from the precincts, poll books, and from reports from their employees that there were problems with provisionals in many precincts and many other poor record keeping problems that made full accounting of the results impossible. They also knew that the election was very close having conducted three counts before the date of certification with the margin never being greater than 261 votes.
It was irresponsible and a violation of the RCW to certify the election while knowing that the results were not within reasonable certainty.
The election was not conducted in a valid manner. But what’s more, the defense that Logan and Huennekens both offer is that they did the best they could, and that they were pressed for time. The law does not say that the results need to be determined as best you can. The results have to be verified reasonably certain before certification. In any accounting process, reasonable certainty comes from accurate records that reconcile. Take a look at the batch slips with numbers crossed out, the spreadsheets that don’t add up, the poll book records that don’t match the spreadsheets, the ballot totals for precincts that don’t show the number of provisionals that reconcile with the poll books, etc.
That’s not reasonable certainty. And rather than admit the problems upfront before Nov. 17th, this information was suppressed and the election was hastily certified anyway.
A clear violation of the RCW and public trust.
Jeff B. I appreciate your words. One question. Do the same laws cover all of the improper ballots/certifications in the Eastern part of the state?
drivel,
sure they do. but were the results in the eastern counties of the state questionable prior to certification? did those elections auditors know it and still certify? do those elections offices have a verifiable historical record of screwing up elections? King County does. they deserve all the heat that they take.
the Dems are months behind in their efforts now and are scrambling. i’d like to see the felon list they compiled vetted for certainty just to make sure that they didn’t encounter the same problems the Rossi team did in compiling their first list. my guess is that they did but the Rossi team has momentum on their side with the admissions from Huennekens and Logan and won’t take the time to analyze the list, instead using the list to further undermine confidence in the election.
Dipping a toe @ 7
You are right on the money.
Imagine how a non-partisan 3rd party would try to statistically correct the election for invalid votes. The first thing they would do is define a standard for investigating invalid votes. Next they would apply those standards to all counties in an effort uncover invalid votes uniformly by county. By doing this, the resulting statistical analysis would be unbiased. Unfortunately for the Republicans, this is not how it was done.
Each county must be scrutinized to the same degree. If you only examine KC intensively, a simple “proportional” counter argument can be made: (1) there is some fraction of votes in each of the other (unexamined or weakly examined) counties that is invalid. (2) Given that the other counties have not undergone the same scrutiny, we can assume that invalid votes occur with the same frequency as found in KC (i.e. proportional to KC invalid error rate). The result is that invalid votes will cancel themselves out in a proportional analysis (there will be a 50-50 correction in the final proportional analysis).
If a proportional analysis is adequate to estimate the invalid votes for correction of the election totals, a proportional analysis should be adequate to estimate the number of invalid votes in under-scrutinized counties.
For this reason, the Republicans blew their investigation. They needed to set standards and document that all counties were scrutinized equally. If they have not done so, all the Democrats have to show is that Republicans missed a significant number of errors in at least some counties. Doing so invalidates any simple proportional correction to the election.
A demonstration of cherry-picking within KC further invalidates any possibility of a statistical correction, and, more importantly, calls into question the veracity of the Republicans investigation.
dj@14,
you’re the man.
Jeff B @ 11
”They also knew that the election was very close having conducted three counts before the date of certification with the margin never being greater than 261 votes.”
This is a completely bogus argument. They should not even pay attention to what was happening statewide. KC needed to myopically certify KC’s results with reasonable certainty.
It was irresponsible and a violation of the RCW to certify the election while knowing that the results were not within reasonable certainty.
I guess it boils down to whether the KC results, with a few hundred know but uncorrectable problems, were known with “reasonable certainty.” From my reading, they corrected all known (at the time) and correctible problems. The known but uncorrectable problems were of such a small magnitude (especially considered the lopsided final KC results) that they seem to fit comfortably within “reasonable certainty.” They could objectively estimate a proportion of errors of roughly 0.001. This is a remarkably low proportion of errors when examined against other equally scrutinized elections of this magnitude.
Not certifying these results almost certainly would have been a felony.
Drivel,
Of course. And that only adds to the uncertainty and violation of the law in conduction of the election.
DJ @ 16,
This is a completely bogus argument. They should not even pay attention to what was happening statewide. KC needed to myopically certify KC’s results with reasonable certainty.
Then why did the election reform bills passed in this last session require all couties to report at the same time in future elections? Like it or not, King County was fully aware of the importance their results would have to the outcome of the election. The counties do not operate in a vacuum, they know they are part of the state as a whole. This doesn’t mean that they knowingly adjusted their totals to assure an outcome, I don’t believe they did that, but they did rush to certification, ignoring significant errors because they knew it might affect the outcome.
Either way it was wrong and a violation of the law.
Jeff B @ 18
“Then why did the election reform bills passed in this last session require all couties to report at the same time in future elections?”
This reform makes perfect sense. Ideally, no county would know the results of any other county when working toward certification. This argues my point that KC needed to focus only on KC results regardless of any potential implications statewide.
“Like it or not, King County was fully aware of the importance their results would have to the outcome of the election. The counties do not operate in a vacuum, they know they are part of the state as a whole.”
But, they are required to process the KC election with the same integrity regardless of what will happen statewide. Or, are you arguing that counties can take shortcuts once it is clear that the statewide election will be lopsided? (I ask this only rhetorically—obviously with many simultaneous races, this cannot be done. They must always work to the highest standards).
“but they did rush to certification”
Without question, KC had the largest burden in meeting the recount deadlines set by (I believe) the Secretary of State. But, did they rush to certification? Again, it looks to me like the errors they actually knew about were uncorrectable.
“ignoring significant errors because they knew it might affect the outcome.”
Please provide an objective definition of “significant errors.” By almost any election standard, an error rate of about 0.001 errors per ballot in an election of this magnitude is quite low.
Significant errors are errors that impact the results and that were ignored. Examples would be both the improperly fed provisionals and the erroneous accounting records such as the batch slips, spreadsheets, poll books, etc. These errors were significant to the outcome of the election, even if in the ideal case King County did not know how their results would influence the final outcome. I agree, that in the future, counties will be able to myopically focus on their own reporting given the changes to the law, but unfoturtunately, as the machine recount finished up last November with only King County left to report and knowing exactly what the outcome would be based on their results, there was a very large white elephant in the room.
If Huennekens and Logan had been acting with true, unbiased integrity, they would have made it clear to all Washingtonions, before the date of the certification, that a significant number of provisional ballots had been improperly fed through the machines, and more importantly that they had no way of accurately accounting for them, as well as know way of accurately accounting for issued absentee ballots.
Had they done so, it would have given everyone pause to consider the proper course of action, instead, under oath, they certified the results of the election as verifiable.
A clear violation of RCW 29A.60.200.
Diggindude@4
You can join chrissy with the model election bs if you want….
I wouldn’t get too excited about Spokane and Yakima felon voters. If you know anything about Easter WA you should know that these might be from democratic stongholds in the urban areas. Spokane city goes democrat while the rural areas go republican – same with Yakima. It kinda like here in Western WA, except that the rural areas have more people proportionally to the urban ones (opposite of Western WA).
So before you get too excited wait until we find out where these felons lived. Remember its the precinct, not the county vote proportion that matters.
Chuck @ 2
This post should be quoted, embossed in gold leaf, framed, and permanently displayed above Goldy’s computer terminal after Rossi’s lawsuit is rejected.
Mr. Cynical @ 3
Just a few days ago, when Mr. C was gloating that it was “too late” for the Democrats to do anything to counter Rossi’s illegal-vote-collecting, I pointed out that Democrats had been investigating the GOP-leaning counties for months.
Mr. C, it’s time to admit I was right and you were wrong. Would you like salt and pepper on your crow?
Rex @ 5
Helloooooo … the Democrats are in business to turn out the Democratic vote, not the Republican vote …
Hey Jeff B. @ 11
“Logan and Huennekens both knew that the election results were not determinitstic within reasonable certainty.”
This statement, in addition to being subjective, constitutes an ultimate legal conclusion; and since you’re not the judge, we can disregard your ultimate legal conclusions.
Rex @ 13
Speaking of “momentum,” Gregoire has occupied the governor’s chair for over three months now, and has already presided over a legislative session, while the only thing Rossi is occupying is an easy chair in his den in front of a TV set. ha ha ha
Now the rationalizations begin. Rationalize away, rightys. Rossi is toast!
Well, I will dare to say that I think the Democrats have a point. I always thought that having 85% of the illegal felon voters coming from King County (the GOP list) was a bit odd, since King County only has 30% of the state’s population. So it is likely that the GOP either cherry-picked the convicted felon list, or made much stronger efforts in King County, since that was Gregoire country.
The issue with the provisional ballot problems in other counties, on the other hand, won’t end up amounting to much. Improper processing of the ballot is not enough. It has to be proven with reasonable certainty that the ballot was not cast by a legal voter. That can be done by (1) proving who cast it and that such person was not legally registered (or had already voted), (2) proving that the signature was not that of the purported voter, or (3) proving that it was a phantom voter (i.e. voterless ballot).
Several of the strongly pro-Rossi counties didn’t check provisional ballots signatures. For the Democrats to gain anything from this, they will have to get handwriting experts and compare all of the ballot envelopes with the voter’s legal signature. They will then have to disclose the name of each voter who allegedly didn’t match. The GOP can easily rebut this expert evidence by having the voter testify that they really did vote that provisional ballot envelope. One hell of a lot of work and zero expected gain for the Democrats.
For example, Whitman County (home of Wazzu) processed 783 provisional ballots without checking signatures. How many of these would a handwriting expert say really weren’t matching the voter’s signature on record? And if the Dems find a few, then the GOP can produce the actual voter to say they really did cast that envelope (just as would have been the case had Whitman County followed normal procedures, and the voter been contacted and given a second chance).
Probably most of Whitman County’s 783 provisional ballots were cast in the Democrat leaning precincts filled with Wazzu students in Pullman, and not by overwhelmingly GOP voters in the remainder of the county. And these more Democrat students are less likely to be located to verify their signature if an expert declares a mismatch. The Dems could even lose ground by investigating Whitman county.
(In my humble opinion, almost none of the mismatched signature ballots were fraudulently cast by someone else. But signature checking is a necessary evil to deter such fraud. The system does have checks and balances to attempt to give voters casting rejected ballots a second chance to verify their signature.)
If proportional analysis is done at the precinct level, the 432 felons found by the Democrats in Rossi country might not help Gregoire’s cause all that much.
For example, the Dems found 55 felon voters in Yakima County — which went for Rossi by almost 64% to 34%. If proportional analysis is applied at the county level, then that is about a 16 vote boost for Gregoire.
However, I am willing to bet that those 55 felon voters in Yakima County, are not randomly distributed throughout Yakima County, but instead are more heavily concentrated in lower income urban precincts. These precincts probably went for Rossi much less heavily than Yakima County as a whole, and Gregoire might have even carried a few of them.
Precinct analysis would likely turn a 16 vote Gregoire boost into only a 2 to 5 vote Gregoire boost from Yakima County — just like it has turned about a 100 vote Rossi boost from King County into about a 200 vote Rossi boost.
I would just like to see justice done. Each side should be allowed to present all the errors they claim — which will provide a fuller pictures, since each side will act in its own self-interest. If the judge decides the legal issues correctly, and applies this legal decision fairly, then we will have justice (regardless of who wins or loses).
Jeff B @ 20
While I believe I understand your definition, I must take issue with it.
“Significant errors are errors that impact the results and that were ignored.”
If, by “impact the results,” you mean “affect the statewide election outcome,” this definition cannot be applied. Most or all counties would have to have ESP to know whether the irresolvable issues would change the outcome for each statewide race. As I have said (and you seem to agree with in principle below) counties must tabulate votes for all races without external benchmarks.
If certifying an election with “no significant errors” means the certified results cannot change the statewide election outcome, no county would be willing to certify their results before all other counties have. Why? Because, if they did certify their results before knowing the final statewide results their entire canvassing board would risk being charged with a crime. After all, their “prematurely certified” might change the outcome! Given that there might be multiple statewide races going on, this risk would not be trivial!
“Examples would be both the improperly fed provisionals and the erroneous accounting records such as the batch slips, spreadsheets, poll books, etc.”
Obviously, they cannot fix the improperly fed provisional ballots. Therefore, it becomes an argument of the magnitude of improperly fed provisional ballots to the rest of the ballots. What is your numeric threshold for such irresolvable errors (a threshold that can be applied universally, for all races, all elections, all counties). For example, if you select a criterion of 0.00001 as the threshold above which an election cannot be certified, then none of the KC races for any office could be certified in last November’s election. And, chances are, none of the other counties could certify any of their races either.
As for records, the question again becomes, did KC resolve these records as best they could? If they make every effort to resolve the records and are still off by couple hundred, does that “invalidate” the election (all races for all countywide or greater offices)? Again, it comes down to a numeric threshold above which the irresolvable errors result in an un-certifiable election (again, if the errors affect all races, then exceeding the threshold would result in no certification for any office).
”…even if in the ideal case King County did not know how their results would influence the final outcome. I agree, that in the future, counties will be able to myopically focus on their own reporting given the changes to the law, but unfortunately, as the machine recount finished up last November with only King County left to report and knowing exactly what the outcome would be based on their results, there was a very large white elephant in the room.”
Those white elephants were Republican election observers! :-)
Seriously, though, your statement here is not about “significant errors;” rather, you are implying that there was manipulation of the KC election (i.e. election fraud). If KC officials engaged in election fraud then they should be prosecuted and thrown in the clink. At this point, however, the Republican case has not made claims of election fraud.
BTW: if fraud is found, this does not mean Bridges will rule in favor of the Republicans. The Republicans must still show with great certainty that the fraud changed the outcome of the election.
”If Huennekens and Logan had been acting with true, unbiased integrity, they would have made it clear to all Washingtonions, before the date of the certification, that a significant number of provisional ballots had been improperly fed through the machines, and more importantly that they had no way of accurately accounting for them, as well as know way of accurately accounting for issued absentee ballots.”
The law requires the canvassing board to certify that the election results to a reasonable certainty. Ultimately, you need a numeric threshold that can be applied universally. Irresolvable errors above that threshold would result in non-certification for the entire suite of county-wide and statewide races.
But, in this election, the observed error rates are so low that the consequences spelled out in the last section of RCW 29A.60.200 must seriously considered: “ Failure to certify the returns, if they can be ascertained with reasonable certainty, is a crime under RCW 29A.84.720.”.
deadwood @ 22
“Remember its the precinct, not the county vote proportion that matters.”
Neither should matter. The whole concept of trying to extrapolate how an individual voted from how other people in the same precinct (or county, or whatever) voted, defies logic.
The fact my neighbor is a Republican doesn’t make me a Republican. Living in a Democratic neighborhood doesn’t make a felon a Democrat.
Proportional analysis depends on making assumptions that are logically flawed.
Richard @ 28
Actually, King County has about 35% of the state’s population and registered voters. By comparison, the 19 eastern Washington counties have only 22% of the state’s population, much of which is concentrated in just four cities.
chuck@21,
actually, i was being generous, the error rate in wa., is much lower than that.
It really does rate as an exceptional election at this point.
Many fewer errors than average.
Why shouldn’t she call it that, if it had so many fewer errors than the rest of the country?
King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties have 52% of the state’s population.
Richard Pope @ 28
As long as we’re playing guessing games, I’ll guess that many of Yakima County’s felons live and work on farms and orchards in the rural precincts of the county. That’s the type of work most readily available in that area. Felons tend to be excluded from the types of jobs found in urban areas because of their criminal records.
DJ,
Suffice it to say that the depositions clearly show that Logan and Huennekens were not able to reconcile all of the accounting documents associated with the election, and that they knew this was the case. I base this directly on their own statements. You can go and read those documents.
The RCW requires them to verify the results of the precincts. They certified what they knew to be inaccurate.
And in this case, they did have the ESP you mentioned because KC reported last. The numbers as certified reflect a vote total from KC that contributed to a Gregoire win. However, both Logan and Huennekens knew that if more time had been spent deciphering what happened in the precincts, it would have produced a different vote total for each candidate. This is obvious.
So once the accounting documents reconciled to the point that the King County numbers added to the rest of the counties’ numbers to produce a Gregorie win, all they had to do was stop the reconciliation of provisional and absentee issues and report the results which contributed to a statewide total and a Gregoire win. Had they continued to explore the problems with the batch slips and the provisionals, the more concise accounting might have ended up with totals that produced a Rossi win, and what we know now suggest that would indeed be the case.
The accounting documents are incomplete, yet they produce a total that favors Gregoire.
The majority of Washingtonians no longer have trust in King County because the decision to stop investigating provisionals and to list the total of absentees that was not consistent with the absentees issued, etc. was made with the direct knowledge that there were additional accounting problems and with the direct knowledge of the outcome that would be produced, a Gregoire win.
DonSux@23–
Before you gloat all over yourself, my point was that some of the Dems 12th hour so-called evidence may not be allowed. We’ll see on Monday.
Since you’ve eaten crow all your pathetic life and I never have, I will defer to you on the seasoning methodology.
Jeff @ 35
“The RCW requires them to verify the results of the precincts. They certified what they knew to be inaccurate.”
Correction: they certified with issues unresolved. To know the results were inaccurate, they had to have had information about who voted for whom. They don’t.
The rest of your post seems to confuse the Election Day result with the final result. When all this was happening, Gregoire was BEHIND, remember? So if they were seeking to elevate Gregoire by waiting, and then by hurriedly certifying the election–they did a pretty lousy job.
Jeff @ 35
torridjoe @ 37 covers one point nicely. I’ll cover another one here.
“The numbers as certified reflect a vote total from KC that contributed to a Gregoire win. However, both Logan and Huennekens knew that if more time had been spent deciphering what happened in the precincts, it would have produced a different vote total for each candidate.… once the accounting dcuments reconciled to the point that the King County numbers added to the rest of the counties’ numbers to produce a Gregorie win, all they had to do was stop the reconciliation of provisional and absentee issues and report the results which contributed to a statewide total and a Gregoire win.”
This sounds extremely speculative on your part. Such behavior would constitute election fraud. If, indeed, they did this, there will be witnesses, and if there are witnesses it means there will be evidence for prosecution of election fraud. But, so far, the Republicans have not gone down that path. I have to conclude that L & H were doing their job impartially.
”The accounting documents are incomplete, yet they produce a total that favors Gregoire.”
The accounting documents are reasonably accurate. Indeed, Gregoire won by a very large margin in K.C.
C @ 36
You claimed the Democrats weren’t collecting evidence of illegal Rossi votes, and I said you were wrong. You were posting bullshit, and you’ve been caught. This isn’t gloating; it’s about your credibility. You were gassing about something you knew nothing about. People are now entitled to wonder if that’s true about everything else you post too.
Mr Cynical @ 36 What make you think that the Democrats have just begun their research? For all we know they have been checking for the past 3 months. Oh, never mind. The great Mr. C is the all seeing, all knowing man behind the curtain
Mr. Cynical didn’t know WTF he was talking about.
All you knotheads have to do is look at the dates of various Democrat public record requests to know when the Dems started researching this issue.
Mr. C @ 42
Why don’t you save us the trouble by posting those dates, as you seem to know the answer.
Great discussion. But illegal votes are illegal votes no matter who voted for whom. It has to be thrown out because of disenfranchisement of legitimate voters by illegal voters. Are Democrats afraid of validating disenfranchisement? Bill Huennekens can’t determine what is a valid vote in his own words in the deposition.
Pudster
Jeff B apparently believes “reasonable certainty” means something different depending on how close the election is. It does not. And I don’t see what they could have done differently, since there was nothing they could do about the improperly processed provisionals after the fact. Unless you can point out how the certification would have been different if they had waited, there is no reason to delay in the face of a legal deadline. There may have been more information about what happened and why, but I see no reason why it would have affected the final vote.
Puddinhead @ 44
Throwing out the entire election because of a few illegal votes disenfranchises me and 2.8 million other legal voters. It makes far more sense to throw out only the illegal votes. What’s your problem with that? In fact, this is what state law requires. Rant all you want, by law Rossi has to prove that illegal votes changed the outcome. If he can’t the election stands. That’s the law — and by the way, as a state senator, Rossi voted FOR this law. So if you have a complaint what the law says, talk to Dino about it.
Alan@46
you say “Rant all you want, by law Rossi has to prove that illegal votes changed the outcome” you are wrong, all Rossi has to prove is that illegal votes “appear” to have changed the outcome.
By the way, with the third round countout we became the laughing stock of the nation. The voters have already been disenfranchised, so it is time to fix it.
Chuck @ 47
I addressed this issue at #25 in the “Breakdown of illegal votes alleged by Democrats” thread as follows:
“Appears” and “proves” are two different things, but it’s important to understand that BOTH are required; i.e., the GOP must prove the facts that make it appear Rossi won.
I can’t tell you how Judge Bridges will define “appears,” because nobody knows. How, in the context of the statute, this probably doesn’t mean what you think it does. You might look out your window and say, “It appears to be raining.” For a court, this isn’t good enough; it’s either raining or it isn’t. Black’s Law Dictionary defines “appears” as, “To be in evidence; to be proved.” In other words, the evidence must create a likelihood that Rossi won the election. Speculation won’t do. Thus, statistical methods that are inherently speculation won’t pass judicial muster. The Repubs can’t guess who those votes were for; they have to show who they were for, by some reasonably reliable method.
you are right Chuck @ 47, with the whining Republican Party continually using deceptional tactics, the GOP in Washington State is the laughing stock of the nation. You finally see the light, congratulations to you and your moonshine
Alan–
Frankly, I think KingCo Elections is and will prove to be the biggest “laughingstock” in this election. I think most people think that both Party’s are doing what Party’s do….try to win.
However, With Dean Logan’s strong Democratic Party background (activist since he was 11 and Lobbyist for Labor Council), it is Logan’s incompetence that is the albatross around the Dems necks.
Right or wrong, if this election contest is upheld, many folks will feel like the Dems cheated. You and I can debate that, but it is what the voters say in the next election that will be the proof.