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Earlier this week I blogged on Seattle Times and AP reports on the financial woes of small-town Washington, like Mansfield and Bridgeport in rural Douglas County. [“Unintended consequences” Part 1 and Part 2]

Josh Feit follows up on the mainstream media’s sympathetic news coverage, but in The Stranger’s characteristically mean mien: “You Made Your Bed.”

Josh interviews Tricia Sima, tiny Mansfield’s beleaguered town clerk, who has been forced to cut a host of services — and add custodial duties to her own job description — as the city lost 76% of its revenues in the wake of Tim Eyman’s anti-car-tab I-695, and anti-property-tax I-747. Josh was decidedly unsympathetic.

After I established that Sima was a Republican (“I’m a bit conservative,” she chimed proudly) I asked her my question: Had the harsh reality of budget cuts made her reevaluate her conservative convictions about taxes? “No,” she told me emphatically. “I believe we can cut other programs that would not hurt the small rural areas.” (How’s that for traditional values? Greed and selfishness.)

According to Josh, compared to a rural county like Douglas, an urban county like King contributes 110 percent more state sales tax per capita, yet gets back from the state only 21 percent more. And King County actually generates 41 percent of state sales tax revenues, while Douglas County nets nearly $300,000 in special assistance. I have been warned in the past that revenue flow comparisons such as these can be complex and misleading, but have been assured by every “expert” I have consulted that, contrary to the myth oft repeated by politicians east of the Cascades, revenue does indeed flow from urban to rural areas.

Yet Douglas County voted 70.3 percent for I-695 and 69.9 percent for I-747. Josh is justifiably irritated at the suggestion that we should cut our services to maintain theirs.

Despite their disproportionate role in the equation, Republicans like Sima think services for the rural areas should take priority when taxes are cut. To that I say, I hope Mansfield’s leaky sewage lagoon is somewhere near Sima’s home.

Now some might (will) argue that if Mansfield wants more public services they are free to tax themselves. But Eyman’s I-776 was a statewide initiative aimed at preventing voters in three urban counties from doing exactly that… taxing themselves. A political “fuck you” that promised to stop Sound Transit from building light rail, it passed by a comfortable margin throughout most of the state, but failed in nearly every precinct within the Sound Transit taxing district.

Understand that the local MVET taxes I-776 banned were only levied in a handful of western Washington counties, and yet people like Sima voted to prevent us, from taxing ourselves, to maintain our public infrastructure… while at the same time expecting us to divert our dwindling tax revenues to subsidize theirs.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe most voters go to the polls attempting to do what they believe is right for their community. Unfortunately, our sense of community has grown so incredibly narrow, that we often fail to see the complex tangle of social, political, and economic interdependencies that Washington state really is. I join Josh Feit in his justifiable outrage over Sima’s misinformed and shortsighted politics, but rather than taking I-told-you-so satisfaction from the image of her backyard overflowing with sewage, I view it as a disturbing metaphor for Washington’s potential future.

There is a growing consensus in Olympia that structural flaws in Washington’s tax system are so profound, that beyond the perpetual budget crises we have now, state and local governments will eventually fall into a catastrophic financial meltdown, sometime within the next decade. Some Democrats see this as an opportunity, a point at which Washington will have no choice but to accept an income tax… or cease to be a modern economy.

I’m not so confident that given the current political climate, voters will make the responsible choice. Major tax restructuring is absolutely essential if we are to stay vital and competitive. But not even a fatal crisis will get us there, unless we first educate voters as to the realities of our current system, and the advantages of a new one.

Politics is rarely about leadership. Most successful politicians are more adept at convincing voters that they agree with us, than at persuading us to agree with them. But giving voters what they want is not leading… it is following.

It is time for individuals and organizations to take on the arduous and nearly-impossible task of shifting public opinion. Whether rising above the rhetorical rancor, or harnessing it to their own devices, it is time for leaders to step forth and risk their political careers in the service of persuading voters that tax restructuring is in the self-interest of all of Washington’s citizens, even those few at the top who will surely see their taxes rise. It is time to build a consensus for a tax system that at the very least meets the needs of a twentieth-century economy, if not the twenty-first.

Republicans refuse to engage in an honest public debate over the proper size and scope of government, because despite the loudmouthed libertarians on the right-wing blogs, they know they’ll lose. And Democrats are equally fearful of telling voters the truth about what it actually takes to give us the services we demand; instead, they perpetuate the charade that we can continue to close an endless series of multi-billion dollar budget gaps without raising revenues… or reverting to a nineteenth-century economy.

Yes I know that I am generalizing; there are some politicians willing to speak out on these issues, but rarely loud enough. For when someone like Ron Sims does, we the people take out his knees, desperately angry at the messenger for telling us what we don’t want to hear. Meanwhile, the politicians who lie the best, we reward the most. There is an odd, pathological symbiosis between us voters and our elected officials, that I would say is suggestive of the “Stockholm Syndrome” if only I could figure out who has been taken hostage by whom.

But we need political leadership whether we want it or not. So somebody better provide some before there’s no one left to lead.

It may be spitefully satisfying to envision Tricia Sima encamped on the edge of her leaking sewage lagoon, but it won’t be so amusing ten or twenty years from now when we are all wallowing in our own communal, political shit, passionately blaming the other guy for what went wrong.

Personally, I’m still willing to help Tricia clean up her mess, if she’s willing to help me clean up mine.

“My name is David Goldstein. I’m a citizen activist and a blogger, and if I’m going to sit at my computer criticizing the legislative process, I feel I have the obligation to come down to Olympia and engage in it.”

That’s how I opened my testimony today before the House State Government Operations & Accountability hearing on HB 1064, “Improving government performance and accountability” (Performance Audits). In case you’re wondering, I testified in favor of the bill.

I also attended the Senate Government Operations & Elections hearing, and curiously, Tim Eyman was nowhere to be seen at either… despite being so passionate about the issue, that he’s willing to spend $600,000 of other people’s money to get it on the ballot as an initiative. Instead, he just sat at home and sent out another fundraising email attacking the bill as a “cheap substitute.”

For my fellow lovers of fiction who also subscribe to Tim’s email list, let’s set the record straight on some of his comments:

I-900 allows true independence. All other proposals require the state auditor to beg and plead each year for funding FROM THE VERY PEOPLE HE IS GOING TO AUDIT.

Um… it’s not the Legislature that will be audited… it’s Executive branch departments and agencies.

And while it is true that HB 1064 does not have a dedicated funding source, other proposals do, such as SB 5083. If Tim bothered to attend the hearing, he could have suggested adding such a provision, although he might have chafed at SB 5083’s $2.5 million a year appropriation — a quarter that of Tim’s initiative. But then, what do you expect from the bill’s ultra-liberal sponsor: the Evergreen Freedom Foundation?

I-900 requires public exposure of the audit reports and ensures public involvement. … The audit proposals in Olympia keep the audit reports secret, hidden from the public, and released only to legislative leaders.

Yeah, that’s true… as long as your idea of a “secret report” is HB 1064’s requirement to post it to the Internet. Also secret I suppose, is the bill’s Citizen Oversight Board, that collaborates with the State Auditor on all audits.

I-900 holds all levels of government accountable. Under current law, the state auditor can conduct FINANCIAL AUDITS of state and local governments in Washington. … I-900 simply expands this existing authority so that the auditor can also do PERFORMANCE AUDITS of state and local governments.

First of all, Tim… STOP SHOUTING.

Second, State Auditor Brian Sonntag, to whom Tim wants to grant the independence to perform these audits, clearly stated his opinion about the initiative before both committees: “It is not the approach I prefer. I prefer a legislative and collaborative process.” Indeed, the idea of mandatory performance audits of all local agencies and accounts is so silly, that I actually provoked chuckles by mentioning the notion of auditing cemetery districts.

I should also note that while I-900 appropriates $10 million a year, the Auditor’s office estimates that it would actually cost $90 million per biennium, and take twelve years to ramp up his office to meet the initiative’s requirements.

And finally…

Democrats are falling all over themselves to get in front of I-900’s speeding train.

Eat me.

Performance audits represent a bipartisan issue that, in one form or another, has passed the House several years running, only to be blocked in the Senate by Republican Pam Roach (who by the way, showed up for the hearing an hour and fifteen minutes late.)

So Tim, don’t give me any shit about Democrats following your lead. Rep. Miloscia has been pushing performance audits for six years, and with 46 co-sponsors, HB 1064 is sure to sail through the House once the language is finalized. Sen. Kastama plans to fast-track a companion bill through his committee, and there is no doubt that the final version will come to the Senate floor for a vote.

There is certainly some institutional resistance from the governor’s office, state agencies, and even the Joint Legislative Legislative Audit and Review Committee. So it may yet take a little arm-twisting to ease a bill through the Senate.

If Eyman really cares about performance audits, instead of just grandstanding the issue for personal gain, he’ll join me in twisting a few Senators’ arms once the time comes. But that seems unlikely, considering that nobody pays him to lobby the Legislature. (At least, not that he’s reported to the PDC.)

HB 1064 enacts comprehensive, independent performance audits, and has broad bipartisan support. If Tim Eyman has an ounce of integrity in his body, he’ll join me in helping State Auditor Brian Sonntag get the bill he wants.

A quick pointer to the excellent AP story running in today’s Seattle Times, that tells the tale of two rural, Douglas County towns struggling to survive in the wake of Tim Eyman’s ill-conceived initiatives. [Rural towns feeling the pinch]

In Mansfield, population 325, the town’s two full-time employees (superintendent and clerk-treasurer) have taken on custodial duties, vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms to save money. Council members have discontinued their $30-a-month salaries, and the mayor now only earns $50. Because they can’t afford the overtime, snow is only plowed during weekday offices hours… by the superintendent himself.

18 miles away in Bridgeport, population 2,100, they’ve closed their 2-year-old public pool because the city can’t afford the $30,000 in annual operating costs. The city also abolished its municipal court, cut its contract with the county sheriff from $98,000 to $73,000, and retired a firetruck to stay within the department’s $11,000 annual budget.

And these cuts have all occurred while both towns were still draining their financial reserves. While the article doesn’t specify, it seems likely they have also exhausted their “banked levy capacity” to help cushion the crisis.

Come 2006, the real hardship sets in.

While there was certainly some legitimate anger over the state’s high MVET tax, much of the revenue was dedicated to sales tax equalization payments to rural towns like Bridgeport and Mansfield; by reducing car tabs to a flat $30, I-695 eliminated this state aid.

Unlike big urban and suburban cities, rural communities don’t have the base to collect a significant amount of sales tax.

“There are no new businesses. No new revenues. No new industries,” Snell said of Mansfield. “The wheat industry is all that we have.”

Bridgeport doesn’t have an industry. There are no major retailers. Mom-and-pop operations

My regular readers know I don’t much care for the Bastards Building Industry of Association of Washington (BIAW). My first introduction to the BIAW was their Orwellian initiative to ban state ergonomic rules (“Workers Against Job-Killing Rules” my ass,) which earned them a top spot on my list of political windmills. But now that they have so openly become the power-behind-the-power-behind-the-puppet — subsuming the official Republican Party in their efforts to unseat Governor Gregoire by any means — it looks like my quest may not be so quixotic after all.

Ah yes… The Seattle Times reports today, that Democratic legislators are preparing to tie off a couple of the udders on the government sponsored cash cow the BIAW milks to feed its viciously partisan political operations. [Bill to cut income of political foe]

Here’s how it works:

State law allows businesses to form workers’-compensation pools to share insurance risks. The BIAW, which operates the state’s largest such pool, gets refunds from the state every year its premiums exceed claims.

The BIAW keeps 20 percent of the refunds and gives the rest to members who participate in its workers’-comp pool. The association’s take in 2004 was more than $5 million, half of which went to its 15 local chapters.

Under the legislation introduced this week, House Bill 1070, groups like the BIAW could keep no more than 10 percent of their refunds. In other words, the BIAW’s income would be cut in half.

The BIAW’s is the largest, but there are nearly 60 such workers’-comp pools in the state, covering 16,000 employers. While the BIAW skims the maximum 20% currently allowed by law, many other pools charge less.

There is no doubt that the “retro rebate” program has been a modest success, and the BIAW and others deserve credit for efficiently managing their pools. But the program was intended to reduce claims and save employers money, not as a means of exploiting inefficiencies in the workers’-comp system so as to permanently fund partisan political activities.

The beauty of the Democratic proposal is that it is “win-win”: it is both good policy, and good politics. It sends more of the refund money back to businesses (where it belongs,) who will reinvest it in creating jobs for real people… not just right-wing Republican politicians.

Rep. Cary Condotta of Wenatchee complains that the bill is a “blatant political attack.” Well, duh-uh! But so is the $750,000 of workers’-comp money the BIAW spent on Dino Rossi prior to Nov. 2, and the untold hundreds of thousands they have spent since, running deceptive TV and radio ads, and dedicating their entire staff of 30 employees to sifting through voting records and felons lists.

The BIAW has not been shy about threatening to pass a “right to work” initiative, effectively defunding organized labor, one of the Democratic Party’s most steadfast allies. I suppose the Dems should just sit back and whine “Gee… that’s not fair,” as they watch a government sponsored monopoly be used to fund a relentless effort to turn Washington into a one-party state along the lines of Texas?

“They’re just mad because we compete with them in the political arena,” BIAW spokesman Erin Shannon said.

Yeah… well, that’s not exactly how she phrased it to The Seattle Weekly in the heady days immediately following the Nov. 2 election, when she gloated:

“We are kicking their ass. How many years have we whipped labor?”

At the time, Erin also described the past election as “a big ‘Fuck you!’ to all the liberals out there.” Sounds like somebody may have finally washed her potty-mouth out with soap.

Democratic Senator Karen Keiser of Kent, who works in the off-season as communications director for the Washington State Labor Council, says the BIAW’s abuse of the workers’ comp-system to fuel their political agenda is “flat out corrupt and should be stopped.” She told the Times that she has no doubt the Democrat-controlled Legislature will pass a bill, and that Gregoire would sign it.

I sure hope so. This is political hardball… and if the BIAW insists on crowding the plate, they deserve to get beaned.

About the only thing more distasteful than reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page, is quoting it to support my own arguments:

Still, we have our doubts about the wisdom of a court challenge and a revote, especially if no fraud can be proven.

Consider, first, the problem of moral hazard. There are dozens of extremely close elections in the U.S. at every level of government, elections in which–like this one–the “real” outcome can never be known. What should determine which of these merits a revote? The judgment of a court? An opinion poll? Either of these is a recipe not for more perfect democracy, but for the destruction of democracy.

Gargle-gargle… spit.

(You can read the editorial here, but swallowing it whole requires registration and some Listerine.)

While much of the rest of the piece is the usual vile sophistry, the point above is why I am confident that the Washington Supreme Court will not reach beyond statute and toss the gubernatorial election without the strong appearance that errors or illegal votes actually changed the outcome. As I’ve repeatedly argued, this election is extraordinary only in its extraordinary closeness. There has been no evidence to suggest that this election is any less perfect than any other; thus to set it aside simply because it is close, calls into question all close elections.

Even the highly partisan WSJ understands the dangerous precedent such a decision would create. It would force all too many elections into the courts, where they will be decided on some arbitrary judicial notion of when the margin of error is too high, or public opinion too rancorous (manufactured or not.)

Some in the “revote” camp argue that seating a governor in the face of such uncertainty offends the public’s sense of fairness… but it clearly does not offend reason, or the law. Whatever the safeguards, no election with 3 million ballots can be 100% flawless. Some ineligible voters will always be counted, while legitimate voters are wrongly disenfranchised — there will always be errors in registration, counting, scanning and reconciliation. And yet if this race had ended in a tie, the winner would have been determined by lot.

Is that fair? Not really. But is it practical? Sure.

The statute codifies the pragmatic notion that in close elections, uncertainty is unavoidable. If the Legislature was unwilling to accept this simple reality, it would have modeled the contest statute along the lines of North Carolina’s, or it would have required a margin of victory substantially larger than… one.

And it never, ever would have accepted a tie.

For in fact, that’s what we have here: a statistical tie with the winner determined according to the rules in place at the start of the election. It may be difficult for the public — and painful for Dino Rossi — to accept this uncertainty. But sometimes uncertainty is the best we can do.

Show your support for following the rule of law! Rally at the Capitol, Tuesday, Jan 11th, 10:30 AM, State Capitol, Olympia WA, Story Pole on North Side of Capitol Campus.

Or, show your support for Christine Gregoire, by telling the Legislature to stand up to the BIAW media campaign, certify the election, and get on with the business of government! Call the Legislative Hotline, 1-800-562-6000, or email your legislators!

Much has been made by the Rossi campaign over the alleged “felon vote”, with the slanderous implication that it would heavily favor Christine Gregoire. Well, I can think of at least one convicted felon who most likely voted for Dino Rossi: his longtime mentor, Melvin Heide.

As was widely reported in The Seattle Times, The Stranger and other publications, Rossi’s rags to riches story is a little ragged around the edges. Rossi got his start at a real estate company owned and operated by Heide, that engaged in fraudulent business practices, bilking millions out of clients. As scandals and bankruptcies unfolded, Rossi’s colleagues fled to more reputable firms, but he stuck with Heide, following him to two other companies.

On August 18, 1989, a federal grand jury indicted Heide on 18 counts of bank fraud, mail fraud, and making false statements. In exchange for other charges being dropped, Heide eventually pleaded guilty to bilking a Tacoma couple out of $400,000 — and on July 20, 1990, he was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay $1.7 million in restitution.

However, Rossi’s eight-year business relationship with Heide only ended in 1992… in the middle of his first political campaign. Even then, Rossi remained close to the Heide family, indeed, Rossi’s first campaign treasurer was none other than Heide’s son, Ralph. (A tip of the hat to Pleasing to Remember for that tidbit.)

Perhaps this explains why several Republican readers took such offense by the technically accurate description of Rossi in my previous post? In light of the shady companies he worked for, the only thing worse than describing Rossi as an “unemployed real estate agent” would be to describe him as an “employed” one.

Gregoire spent most of her professional career putting felons behind bars, while Rossi spent much of his working for one. So who do you think is more deserving of the “felon vote”?

“Glass houses,” and all that.

According to KING5 News, Grays Harbor, Kittitas and Lewis counties have already rejected state GOP requests to reconsider rejected ballots, while the Clark County canvassing board is currently meeting to review the issue. Considering how sloppy the R’s have been in researching these “rejected” ballots, it’s no wonder even all-Republican canvassing boards aren’t taking the request seriously:

The GOP had submitted nine affidavits from voters in Lewis County, who said their votes hadn’t been counted. But late Tuesday morning, Lewis County rejected the Republican request to review those ballots.

The canvassing board determined that five of those nine votes had been counted already. The board voted two to one to refuse to reconsider the other four because it would be expanding the parameters of a recount.

Let’s see now, that’s five of nine “rejected” ballots have already been counted… for a 56 percent error rate. Maybe Stefan will correct me if I’m wrong, but if Chris Vance had been running elections in King County, we can confidently predict that Dino Rossi would have won by approximately 500,000 votes.

The R’s are just going through the motions on this one folks. It’s on to the formal contest.

UPDATE:
The AP reports that the Clark County canvassing board has unanimously decided not consider 24 affidavits brought forth by the GOP. No word yet on how many of these were actually from people whose votes weren’t counted.

Also in the news, Christine Gregoire’s lead has dropped to 129, after the Secretary of State’s web site backed out one vote that Thurston County had attempted to add after it had officially certified its results. This is consistent with the SOS guidance that says counties can’t reopen the results once they certify.

As reported in the Seattle Times (and nearly everywhere else), the WA State Democrats delivered a $730,000 check to the Secretary of State’s office today, and officially requested an unprecedented statewide hand recount of over 2.8 million ballots cast in the governor’s race.

The party also filed suit in the state Supreme Court, seeking a ruling that would allow all ballots cast to be considered, not just those counted in the previous two counts. Republicans are calling this a “nuclear bomb”, but the issue at hand is really very simple.

RCW 29A.64.011 states the following:

An officer of a political party or any person for whom votes were cast at any election may file a written application for a recount of the votes or a portion of the votes cast at that election for all candidates for election to that office.

And RCW 29A.64.050 further specifies:

a complete recount of all ballots cast for the office

What the Democrats are asking for is a ruling on what actually constitutes “all ballots cast”. Is it actually all the ballots cast in the election, or only those ballots already counted? The Democrats would like to start from scratch, as if the election just occurred, and reexamine the signatures of those absentee and provisional ballots previously ruled invalid. Seems reasonable enough.

D’s are also asking for a consistent standard to be applied across all counties in regard to signature matching on absentee and provisional ballots. The so-called “threatening letter” the D’s sent Wednesday to the Secretary of State alleges that King County rejected over 1500 absentee ballots and hundreds of provisional ballots because signatures did not sufficiently match those on record, yet a few counties “admitted candidly that they did not review the provisional ballot signatures at all.”

Republicans argue that a “recount” involves counting again something that has been counted before, and thus only those ballots counted the last time around should be reexamined… a reasonable definition of the word, but alas, one that does not appear in the RCW. This definition is further undermined by the fact that first “recount” included hundreds of ballots that were not part of the original “count.”

So, which way will the Supremes rule, if they rule at all? Hell if I know, for while I’m fairly competent at reading the law, I am — much to my mother’s chagrin — not an attorney. But either way, it doesn’t sound to me like the “nuclear bomb” the R’s are making it out to be.

With a hand recount looming in our historically close gubernatorial election, there has been much debate over the relative accuracy of hand counts versus machine counts, and the error rate of vote counting technologies in general… most of it uninformed.

In my typically wonkish fashion I decided to dive into the most technical research I could find, and tediously share my gleanings with you. My primary source is the CalTech/MIT Voter Technology Project, and much of my data is drawn from the following reports:

Using Recounts to Measure the Accuracy of Vote Tabulations: Evidence from New Hampshire Elections 1946-2002

Residual Votes Attributable to Technology: An Assessment of the Reliability of Existing Voting Technology

Conflicting numbers regarding the error rate of voting machines have been tossed about in partisan blogs, the news media, and the John Carlson Show (which doesn’t really fall into either category.) On the one hand, the certification standard for voting machines in Washington state is indeed one failure in one million. But it is also true that the residual vote rate — the primary statistical measure of the performance and accuracy of voting technologies — is one to two votes in one hundred.

The residual vote rate is the difference between total ballots cast, and votes counted for a particular office, such as president or governor; these residual votes represent the “over” and “under” votes we hear about. And it is this measure that is significant in comparing competing technologies.

The fact that the counting machines themselves are virtually flawless is meaningless in the context of the larger discussion, because they are only flawless in counting flawlessly prepared ballots. For example, both optical scan and punch card machines will test to the same high certification standards, yet the average residual vote rate for punch card ballot systems is nearly double that for optical scan.

The large performance difference between the two systems is due, not to mechanical failure, but to a higher rate of “human error” by those voters using the punch card ballot system versus those using optical scan. This is a reflection of the way people relate to the particular technology… a concept that should be well familiar to user interface designers, or anyone who has ever manned the technical support line at a software company.

Indeed, Direct Recording Electronic devices (DREs) — including the touch-screen voting machines to which many counties are switching — have amongst the highest residual vote rates of all existing technologies, despite the fact they are programmed to make over-votes (voting for multiple candidates in the same race) impossible, and always tabulate ballots with 100% accuracy. (Or so Diebold tells us.) Meanwhile, hand-counted paper ballots, which provide no safeguard against over-votes, and risk introducing human error into the counting process, have one of the lowest residual vote rates.

Thus it is not the counting machine that introduces statistically significant error into the voting system, but rather the interface by which voters are asked to mark the ballot. It has become popular for bloggers and columnists to criticize voters for not following instructions, but when one voting technology produces error rates twice that of another, the technology deserves part of the blame. And clearly, voters in counties using punch card systems are being disenfranchised at rates nearly twice that of those in counties using optical scan… and at a rate well outside the margin of error in our gubernatorial election. (I’ll get to that in a moment.)

As to the relative accuracy of the various voting technologies, the CalTech/MIT studies found that voting systems fell into two clusters: paper ballots, lever machines and optical scanned ballots produced residual voting rates of one to two percent. Punch card and electronic voting methods produced rates of approximately three percent.

So, are hand counts accurate? According to the studies, hand counts are at least as accurate as lever machines and optical scanners, and significantly more accurate than punch card and electronic voting systems. In fact, when looking at counties that switched from one technology to another and comparing the resulting residual vote rates, the study found that while the overall results were consistent with other analyses…

Paper might even be an improvement over lever machines and scanners.

CalTech/MIT also explores a second measure of accuracy, tabulation validation rate — the agreement between initial counts and recounts of ballots in contested elections. This metric is less useful as a comparative tool, because it cannot be used to measure mechanical (lever) and electronic voting machines, as there are no ballots to recount. And the study in question only compared hand-counted paper ballots with optically scanned ballots.

The study found the tabulation invalidation rate was .83 percent for paper and .56 percent for optical scanning. Thus the discrepancy between the initial count and the recount was less for optical scan than for hand-counted paper.

To be honest, I’m not sure what, if anything, this says about the relative accuracy of hand recounting optical scan ballots, let alone punch cards. And here’s the part that might piss some people off… I’m not sure it even matters.

For what this study does tell us is that even the most accurate voting technology still is not accurate enough:

Considering these tabulation errors, how confident should we be in vote counts, and when should we have a recount? The tabulation invalidation rate was low, especially for optical scanning. However, it was not trivial. In a US House election with 250,000 votes, the invalidation rate of .005 for scanners amounts to 1250 votes. The tabulation errors may swing toward any of the contestants in a recount. Assuming a uniform distribution of tabulation errors, any race decided by less than .5 percent of the vote will have a non-trivial probability of being reversed in a recount.

A .5 percent invalidation rate in a gubernatorial election with over 2.8 million votes cast amounts to 14,000 erroneous votes! With only 42 votes separating the two candidates, no counting method can accurately tell us who really got the most votes.

Republicans scoff at Gregoire calling this election a tie, but statistically speaking, it is. This election is so far within the margin of error, that there is no practical way to accurately determine the winner.

Thus, the results of the third count — whether hand or machine — will be just as meaningless as the results of the first two.

Republicans argue that “winning” the first two counts gives Rossi legitimacy. It doesn’t. It’s like flipping a coin and having it land on heads two times in a row.

And Democrats argue that a hand recount will more accurately determine the winner. It can’t. This race is simply too close to call. We’ll never know who really got the most votes.

Fortunately, the law does prescribe an endgame. Gregoire will request a hand recount, and whoever “wins” that, will be governor.

And who do I think is gonna win? Flip a coin.

[Linking here from (un)Sound Politics? You can comment directly on Stefan’s critique, or join a discussion here: “Lies, damn lies, and statistics.”]

According to a “reliable source” several tribes have agreed to contribute about $100,000 to the Gregoire campaign to help cover the costs of a hand recount.

(Hmmm… do you think Tim Eyman would have ponied up some of his hard earned panhandled cash to help Rossi pay for a recount?)

Now I’m sure folks like Timmy and the aluminum milliners at Sound Politics are going to whine about the tribes trying to “buy an election” or some bullshit spin like that. But it’s a political contribution like any other, and I don’t hear the righties complaining when the BIAW spends half-a-million putting a justice on the State Supreme Court.

Anyway, the point is, despite Paul Berendt pleading poverty, the D’s are on their way to raising the money necessary; news reports claim the Democratic Governor’s Association, EMILY’s List and the Democratic National Committee have also made financial commitments. Whether the D’s ask for a full or partial recount depends on how much money they raise by the Friday deadline.

Either way, there is definitely going to be a hand recount.

[Hey visitor from Sound Politics, take a gander at this: Heads or tails… why we’ll never know who really won the governor’s race]

A precinct-level analysis by the Seattle Times revealed that President Bush’s support slipped from 2000 in Eastside suburbs, including some of the ritzier neighborhoods. [Bush’s Eastside support slipped]

This is not just a local phenomena; even while Republicans have cemented their hold on an ever expanding red exurbia, close-in suburbs have been gradually shifting Democratic. For example, in Philadelphia’s affluent Main Line — a longtime bastion of “Rockefeller Republicanism” — Kerry carried some precincts by historic margins as Republicans finally seemed to realize that the national party left them years ago. And in traditionally Republican Mercer Island, Democrats now hold two out of the three legislative seats.

To me, this is one of the few hopeful signs that came out of an otherwise bleak election season. And it suggests a strategy for rebuilding a Democratic majority.

Just like the Democrats lost their base in the South with their support of civil rights legislation in the sixties, the GOP risks alienating their moderate, suburban base by abandoning fiscal conservatism to focus on right-wing social issues at home, and military and economic imperialism abroad. The neo-cons may dominate the national Republican leadership, but they do not represent the majority of suburban voters.

Families move to places like Mercer Island for better public schools, cleaner streets, safer neighborhoods, and all the other public services that a higher property tax base provides. These are people who believe in government because they benefit from it every day, and they routinely tax themselves to pay for the services they want.

These are people with whom urban Democrats have common ground, and we have an opportunity to exploit the wedge the neo-cons have provided, to expand our base politically and geographically. For in addition to a shared belief that good government is necessary to maintaining a high quality of life, suburban and city voters have a mutual interest in maintaining an economically and culturally vibrant urban core.

I grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia, yet I always considered myself a Philadelphian; it is this larger sense of community that Democrats must encourage in metropolitan areas around the nation if we are to have a hope of expanding our political base. To do so we must continue to be a party of progressive ideals, while remaining tempered by fiscal responsibility. We must focus on efficiently providing the level of public services voters demand, by maintaining an adequate and fair tax structure.

And urban Democrats must do a better job of reaching out across the city line to work with our suburban neighbors on solving our regional problems. I’m not suggesting compromise as a political expediency, but rather the type of collaborative engagement that fosters consensus and creativity. We’re both trying to improve education, reduce traffic, increase public safety, etc… if throwing money at a problem isn’t the only solution, then perhaps Seattle has something to learn from Mercer Island?

On the larger, divisive social issues that Republicans all too often successfully exploit to their advantage, Democrats must learn a rhetorical lesson from the opposition, and deconstruct these debates to the real world choices that people understand. For example, if the abortion debate remains a choice between dead and mangled fetuses versus a vague and unwritten Constitutional “right to privacy”, abortion foes will win. But when the public is faced with a choice between dead fetuses and young women dying of sepsis from back-alley abortions… well… that’s the kind of brutally compelling argument that led to legalized abortion in the first place.

But Democrats must also recognize that there are some issues on which we are clearly in the minority, and we must not replicate the Republican leadership’s penchant for arrogantly ramming an unwanted social agenda down the throats of the public. Political leadership is not about giving voters what they want, or what we want. It is about patiently and persuasively building a consensus where none existed before.

Democrats must not shy away from voicing their support for issues like gay marriage — if that is what they truly believe — but to attempt to impose gay marriage on an unwilling public through legislation or litigation is to invite the sort of costly political backlash we saw in the November election. The legal protections of civil union may be the least we can offer to committed, unmarried couples… but at the moment, it may also be the most.

Of course, a precinct-level analysis can be a little like reading tea leaves or entrails, and I wouldn’t want my right-wing friends at Sound Politics to label me a political haruspex. In the end, voters tend to vote for candidates, not issues, and so divining demographic trends from a single election can be misleading. After all, our state GOP is making a big deal about the so-called “Dinocrats” who may have cost Gregoire the gubernatorial election, but few are suggesting that this portends Washington turning red in 2008.

What I do know is that moderate suburban Republicans are increasingly willing to buck party loyalty and vote for Democratic candidates, representing a clear opportunity for Democrats to permanently expand their base. There is an urge to look at the huge swath of red on the electoral map and ask if we need to redefine the Democratic Party to appeal to this disaffected middle America.

But for a party firmly rooted in our nation’s urban centers, a potential Democratic majority can be found much closer to home. In fact, it’s just across the city line.

Yesterday I asked readers to try to convince me why Gregoire shouldn’t pay for a manual recount. The fact that none of you succeeded isn’t surprising, but I was disappointed by the lack of honesty.

The GOP isn’t asking Gregoire to concede for the good of the state, or out of honor or decency. They’re asking her to concede because they want Rossi to be governor, and they know that with a 42 vote margin out of 2.8 million cast, a manual recount would be a crap shoot.

Which, of course, is why Gregoire should ask for a manual recount. She could actually win, legally, and fair and square.

Not enough of an argument? Try these:

A) Manual counts are more accurate than machine counts. That is why WA, like every other state (I’ve looked at), either mandates a manual recount when the vote falls within a very close margin, or allows the candidates to request one. Machines are used because they are faster and cheaper, not because they are more accurate. Random errors tend to be statistically distributed among the candidates, thus a 1-2% error rate is acceptable in most elections… but not when the margin is less than 0.000015%.

B) This is not a “best out of three” series. It is utter bullshit to argue that Rossi won the first two counts, and that Gregoire winning on a third count would not be legitimate. The accuracy of machine counts fall outside the margin of this election; the only thing the recount proved was that a manual count is necessary to accurately determine the winner.

C) It’s the law. This isn’t a game… this is about who will be the next governor, and it would be irresponsible of Gregoire not to avail herself of any measure the law allows to assure her victory. Rossi’s BIAW backers used the law to their advantage when they pumped hundreds of thousands of workers comp dollars into his partisan campaign, and you can be sure they explore every avenue of the law each time they want to pave a farm or drain a wetland. Gregoire has a responsibility to her supporters to use the law to protect their interests.

The Seattle P-I makes the argument that Gregoire should indeed seek a manual recount, but pay for it statewide, rather than in selected precincts: “Count ’em again, Sam.”

I don’t buy the P-I’s argument that there is some moral or ethical imperative that the D’s should pay for a statewide recount. But strategically, I say they should ask for a full statewide manual recount regardless. It wouldn’t be bad PR either.

After all, this is the only way we’ll ever know who actually won this election.

I’d like to take a break from speculating on the ballot count in the governor’s race to actually talk about something important. Underage gambling.

As my regular readers know, I was a vociferous opponent of Tim Eyman’s I-892, an initiative that would have put 18,255 slot machines into over 2000 locations in nearly every community in the state. But just because I-892 was crushed at the polls with less than 38% of the vote, doesn’t mean I’m going to let this issue die.

As an editorial in today’s Seattle P-I points out, I-892 was rejected because Washington voters simply don’t want more gambling. The No campaign had a very simple task — they didn’t have to convince voters that putting slot machines into our neighborhoods is a bad idea — they merely had to convince voters that I-892 would put slot machines into our neighborhoods.

Washingtonians understand that expanding gambling comes with social costs that simply are not worth the extra tax revenues. But I’m not sure we fully understand exactly how much gambling can cost us.

Our children.

Back on 9/30 I told you about an extraordinary documentary shot by some recent grads of Shorewood High School that showed teenagers — some as young as 12 — caught up in the current gambling craze (“Problem gambling isn’t kid’s play“.) The documentary was later the subject of a KING-5 TV special report: “Underage gambling out of control“.

Thanks to a tip from problem gambling advocate Jennifer McCausland, the Washington State Gambling Commission and Washington State Liquor Control Board conducted a joint sting operation at seven Seattle-area mini-casinos. WSGC officials were surprised to find that a “very young looking” sixteen-year-old was able to gamble and purchase alcohol at three of the seven targeted card rooms.

You’d think with a major gambling initiative on the ballot, this would have been big news in the weeks leading up to the election, but it’s only during the past week that this story is beginning to get a bit of play. Both KOMO-4 TV and KING-5 TV ran pieces yesterday showing seized surveillance footage from the sting operation. [Casinos busted for allowing 16-year-old to gamble, buy alcohol] It’s pretty stunning.

Eyman pooh-poohed it during the campaign, but Washington — and much of the rest of the nation — is facing a growing public health crisis: compulsive gambling, an addiction that is just as real and destructive as drug and alcohol abuse. The rapid expansion of gambling here and elsewhere only serves to normalize the experience for our children, while state lotteries spend millions of dollars marketing gambling as the ticket to Easy Street. And the current poker craze, fueled by coverage on ESPN (and even local TV!) will inevitably serve as a gateway towards a lifetime of addiction for an entire generation.

Yes, only 5% of adults are problem gamblers (although they account for as much as 60% of casino profits), but according to a 1999 study, the addiction already afflicted more than one in twelve WA teens. And that was before the poker craze, at a time when total state gambling revenues were half what they are today.

While Eyman promises a son-of-892, that’s not my main concern; the gambling industry is not going to throw good money after bad, and there’s no way he can qualify the initiative for the ballot without their cash.

My concern is that we have a unique opportunity to do something about this problem, and we can’t afford to blow it. I-892, the Shorewood High documentary and the WSGC sting operation have all helped to create public awareness of this growing crisis, while Democratic control of the Legislature offers a hope of funding problem gambling treatment and prevention programs. Such legislation was blocked in the Republican-controlled Senate last session, and regardless of who becomes the next Governor, we need to pressure Olympia to finally take action.

We need greater enforcement of underage gambling laws, and stricter penalties for their violation. But most important, we need to start educating parents and teens about the warning signs of problem gambling, and the very real dangers of lifelong addiction. Ms. McCausland’s Second Chance Washington is a great start, but it’s the responsibility of the commercial and tribal gambling industries to start paying for the problem they are creating.

This is not the last you’ll hear from me on this subject, regardless of what Tim does.

Since I’m getting a lot of traffic from the AP article on bloggers obsessively tracking the vote count in the governor’s race, I thought I better play my assigned role, and provide some updates throughout the day.

So here are the latest totals out of approximately 2.8 million votes cast:

Time     Rossi Lead   Projected Margin   Ballots Left
10:30am  1935         3417               41423
11:05am  1948         3419               41273
12:45am  1988         3405               38873
04:10pm  1974         3359               36573
05:00pm  -657         1365               27493
06:45pm  -158         1430               21666

Gregoire now holds a 158 vote lead after King County reported 17,000 votes this afternoon… a bit of a surprise considering King County had previously reported only 11,000 ballots left to count. However, based on the remaining distribution of uncounted ballots, Rossi is still projected the winner by 1430 votes.

For those D’s looking for a glimmer of hope… perhaps you should look elsewhere. It has been pointed out to me that I was wrong in saying Maria Cantwell picked up 1500 votes in her recount… she only picked up 306.

But it certainly looks like we’re headed for a recount.