WA state Rejected ballots take center stage

[rodeodance]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002112647_recount08m.html
Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - Page updated at 11:00 A.M.

Rejected ballots take center stage

By David Postman and Andrew Garber
Seattle Times Olympia Bureau

OLYMPIA — The race for governor has become a battle over whether thousands of ballots disqualified during the first two tallies will be counted. It is the central issue in a case the state Supreme Court says it will hear next week.

Democrats backing Attorney General Christine Gregoire want the court to compel county canvassing boards to reconsider more than 15,000 ballots they previously rejected.

Republicans backing Dino Rossi, who was certified as governor-elect, say no new ballots should be added to the nearly 3 million counted twice. After the first count, Rossi was ahead by 261 votes, a lead that shrank to 42 votes after a statewide machine recount.

The high court has agreed to hold a hearing on the Democrats' lawsuit this coming Monday at 1:30 p.m.

[merwin]

1. Look on the bright side...

Snohomish county, since they use paperless electronic voting (completely paperless), will be spending 5 days to PRINT COPIES of all of the ballots cast based off of the totals that are recorded in the electronic tabulator machine, and then spending their efforts counting those copies to make sure they match the electronic count (see anything wrong with that?).

At least they won't have to worry about spoiled ballots :)

[mom cat]

2. Orwell would have loved it! Welcome to DU merwin.

:hi:

[ezee]

3. There is whole lot wrong with that.

Just came back from sorting ballots for the last 4 hours in Grays Harbor county, a small county . I am so thankful that we use a paper ballot here. At least we have the correct paper to look at so we can determine the vote if needed. The electronic vote might as well not ever be cast in my opinion. There is no way to prevent tampering with it. This should be a bi-partisan issue that is settled before the next election. Throw out paper less voting!

[Zorra]

6. Yep. There is no way to prevent tampering with electronic voting. None.

The whole idea behind it is to be able to easily commit election fraud.

And that's it.

[pleiku52cab]

4. Being a cynic.....

If there was any fraudulent tampering with the paperless black boxes, I would think that the 'fixed results' are already in the tabulator. Printing a lie does not change the fact that it is still a lie.

[merwin]

5. The games have begun...

The first few small counties using the "quaint" paper ballots came back and the totals pretty much match. Net gain of 3 for Rossi.

Anyways, the small counties are pretty much guaranteed to come out the same, with the small number of people and the methods used in voting.

It's the larger ones like King county that I believe will be much more difficult and provide differences in the votes, which I also believe is why Rossi and the rest of the republicans are so scared of a hand recount.

The real test will be on Monday, when the spoiled ballots (and how they are spoiled) are considered. Personally, I think it's a HORRIBLE idea to compare signatures on absentee ballots with the registration cards to verify a voter's elegability (Washington has a high number of absentees btw... permenant absentee's are generally encouraged here nowadays). My signature has changed significantly about 3 times in the past 5 years, so should my vote not be counted?

Anyways, enough of my ranting :-)