Tide May Be Turning To Gregoire In Recount

[Viva_La_Revolution]

OLYMPIA, Wash. - Through all the counting and recounting in the closest governor's race in state history, Republican Dino Rossi has held the slimmest of margins over Democrat Christine Gregoire - even picking up a few votes here and there as a tedious hand recount grinds on.

For the first time since the Nov. 2 election, it looks as though the tide could be turning.

Election officials in the Democratic stronghold of King County announced Monday that they would count more than 500 ballots that were mistakenly rejected after the election - possibly enough to swing the election to Gregoire.

Rossi won the Nov. 2 election by 261 votes, but saw that margin shrink to 42 votes after a machine recount of all 2.9 million ballots cast. As of Monday night, with 24 of the state's 39 counties completing their hand recounts, Rossi had gained 46 votes.

more...http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=73421

drip, drip. drip, drip, drip!!!!

[Leilani]

1. Terrific news!

EOM

[MissB]

2. Hooray! And this is the third and final recount

so these results matter.

[Judi Lynn]

3. If they did it wrong, they should correct it this time.

The American people shouldn't have to live with either their gross mistakes or their gross machinations.

We need new incintives to encourage everyone connected with the actual election to get honest, and to stay honest. It shouldn't be this easy for things which have a profound effect to simply "go wrong."

From the article:

"Washington will show the nation it is committed to counting every vote," David Burman, attorney for the Democrats, told the court. Burman estimated about 3,000 ballots were wrongly rejected and should be included in the hand recount. Two-thirds are in King County.

The secretary of state's office, county auditors, Rossi and the state Republican Party fought the motion in court. State law defines a recount as re-tabulating the valid ballots, not dredging up ballots that have already been considered and rejected, they contended.
(snip)

[Village Idiot]

4. This recount should give the race to Gregiore

I believe that they are going to re-count over 500 absentee ballots that were not counted previously due to "unmatched signatures." I hope they verify....this should be a cakewalk!!!

[merwin]

16. Careful, that's what * said about Iraq :-) n/t

[texpatriot2004]

5. So without the hand recount the wrong person could become

the Gov? I am so glad they are recounting.

[Nordic]

9. we need a national system that counts votes properly the FIRST time

recounts should never be necessary

When was the last time a bank lost a penny?

It shouldn't be such brain damage to count votes

[merwin]

17. Diebold makes ATM's as well

They can't claim ignorance ;)

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[blm]

10. One of those ballots rejected was a sitting Councilman's.

He saw his name on the rejected list and raised a stink. His original records PROVED he had a signature on file.

Someone was rejecting Dem votes unfairly, imo. Who?

[Old and In the Way]

12. There you go again.

Stepping on the Republican talking points with facts.

:-)

[Straight Shooter]

20. Yeah. The nerve.

Standing up for democracy like that. If people keep doing that, next thing you know, Kerry will be inaugurated in 2005. :D

[Megahurtz]

7. I hope this will set a precedent!

:bounce:

[maxsolomon]

8. lets say she wins by 42 votes

the GOP will have james baker on a lear jet in 20 minutes to come & dazzle the rubes with his jack-booted elan. complimented by a mob of bellevue realtors at the election board.

this one won't be over if "chris" pulls it out. there will be a second hand recount.

if she'd run a competent campaign this never would have happened. realtors are slime.

[merwin]

11. By law you can only recount twice in WA

The system allows for an automatic machine recount, and the option to have a hand recount after that. Period.

[Tacos al Carbon]

14. realtors are slime?

That's a bizarre non-sequitor.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Straight Shooter]

22. Realtors

Someone has a personal axe to grind, it seems.

[merwin]

28. You don't have to be respectful about it. When we start

putting people into generalizations, things get really bad. There's a handful of bad realtors, but most are friendly and honest.

[kostya]

41. Actually, most of the problem comes from the brokers, so

don't blame the RE agents, they are on the next to bottom rung of that food chain (the seller below them). The guild system they use for selling RE makes it more like an MLM model with just two layers and hyper-competitive among the RE agents, which pushes any integrity they had to begin with to the limit. The bar to entry in that field is not very high, either. I really can't blame them, as if I were in their shoes (which I would never want to be) I'd probably feel the pressure just as much and who knows how I'd react.

- K

[Tacos al Carbon]

13. This is interesting

According to the article, Rossi has an 88 vote lead. There are 561 uncounted ballots from a county where Gregoire got 58% of the votes. 58% of 561 is 325, which is 89 more than the remaining 236 (42%) votes. If percentages hold, Gregoire could win by a vote or two. This assumes that all 561 votes are valid, that percentages hold and that there are no other missing votes from other counties left to be counted.

[merwin]

15. Yes, but...

You're forgetting that the counties to come in so far are the republican counties. The counties that are voting primarily democrat (the larger ones) haven't finished counting yet... I would expect Gregoire to pick up some extra votes there as well.

[Ed C. Finley]

18. As A Washington Resident

I have a big stake in the outcome of this election. I want every vote counted, but I have an extremely hard time with people trying to find out the "intent" of a voter by looking at a ballot. The ballot was either filled out or punched out correctly or not.

If the voters are too stupid to vote the right way when the instructions are right there, they are too stupid to have anything substantive to say aout the state is run.

Count the damn ballots, but any that aren't 100% correct throw out.

[w4rma]

19. Beware

Beware of those in power who would require you to have enough knowledge to be a lawyer to simply cast your vote and have it count as you intended it.

[Ed C. Finley]

23. You don't need to be a lawyer

to fill out a ballot correctly when the instructions are right there.

However, I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.

[w4rma]

29. Not yet, but in some places those "instructions" are over-complex.

Poll tests (including literacy tests) are unconstitutional, btw.

[merwin]

24. That's exactly what the republicans are saying, but

The problem is, in this election, they are discriminating over thousands of absentee votes where they said the signatures on the voter cards didn't match the absentee ballot.

Who exactly decides what's a match and what's not a match?

[Ed C. Finley]

38. I'll grant you thats a problem

I know I don't sign my name the same way all the time...perhaps we should go to mail in ballots like in Oregon, you don't hear about as many problems there.

My problem with idiocy in the voting booth goes back to 1964 when I read about that old lady who wasn't going to vote for Goldwater because he was going to get rid of TV. When informed that he wanted to get rid of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) she said she was going to vote for Johnson just to be sure. When Goldwater retired in the 80's he joked about it on Larry King. I was pretty much appalled he took it so lightly.

I'm a political junkie, like most here, and others who frequent other message boards, and whether we agree or not most everyone's opinion is well informed, and it gripes me that my vote is cancelled out by some ignorant sumbitch (of either gender) who coudn't poor piss out of a boot. Such people are too easily led. Their ignorant attempts at influencing our government through their unknowlegeable doofesry in the voting booth is dangerous to our liberties.

[TahitiNut]

27. "100% correct"? What does that mean?

It sounds to me like that would create very different levels of "voting rights" nationwide - possibly akin to a "literacy test" in come cases, which have been very soundly deemed unconstitutional.

The balloting mechanisms are chosen for administrative convenience and efficiency, not as back-door voting eligibility criteria. Whether it be punch card, touchscreen, optical scan, or paper, the medium cannot be interpreted as establishing some level of qualification to vote! The qualification to vote must be separately and explicitly defined, and cannot be created through some de facto local procedure!

The failure of some automated ballot tabulation equipment to reliably count the votes recorded on some ballot cannot assume the power of law to disenfranchise a voter. Its a failure of the equipment! The only fair and equitable tabulation of such a ballot is the honest and fair assessment of the voter's evident intention. If, for example, the voter both fills in the bubble next to a candidate's name and also writes in that candidate's name - the intention is clear even though the equipment will fail to count it.

I am angered by those who'd sneer and diss those whose ballots weren't easily tabulated by the equipment. That's a form of arrogance and elitism that supports literacy tests and poll taxes - both overwhelmingly recognized as unconstitutional.

[Ed C. Finley]

34. If the bubble was filled in

and the ballot says "make no other marks on ballot" and gives examples of correct and incorrect ways to fill out said ballot and these people, of whatever party, are too dense to get it then , no, kick their ballot to the curb.

I'd like to see you try your argument when trying to get a drivers license. "Well I meant this," and "you should know what I mean even tho I scrawled all over the test with a crayon."

If it makes me an elitist by insisting that everybody follow the same rules I have to follow, then I guess I am one. (Hot damn!)

[TahitiNut]

35. Following such instructions CANNOT be a requirement to vote.

Voting and driving are fundamentally different. There is no human right to drive a car. Voting is a human right! Disenfranchising that right based on widely varying 'instructions' (which do NOT carry the weight of Due Process) is fundamentally a violation of human rights and a de facto abridgement by government that's contrary to the Constitution.

Period. End of story.

People who can't accept this are not just undemocratic, they're not even supportive of what could be reasonsably called a 'free nation'.

[merwin]

36. Voting is not a right in the USA. Check the constitution

It only says that when you do vote, you cannot discriminate. It says nothing about the actual right to vote. That is left completely up to the states.

[TahitiNut]

39. Fundamental to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution ...

... is the supreme right of the People to determine their own governance. Without this, these very documents themselves become illegitimate. Thus, it's not a question at all of whether people have a fundamental human right to vote - it's only a question of where and whether that right has been legitimately abridged through due process.

The (totally specious) argument that something not specifically identified as a 'right' (within the language that LIMITS government power) in the Constitution is a constant logical (and ethical) fallacy. In elevating the jurisdiction for appropriate exercise of such rights (i.e. 'where') to the states, the principle of a People->States->Federal hierarchy of governance is being affirmed. In effect, this confirms that voting is a right and that the Federal government is even further prohibited from abridgment of that right than where it's permitted some power of regulation.


(I personally don't believe the exercise of our voting rights should be abridged by some notion of 'citizenship'. I believe that anyone who's a (legal) resident should be enfranchised and have a say in the governance to which they're subject - even felons. But that's a far more substantive and principled argument than we have time for.)


On edit: Let's try real hard to remember something - Under the theory of Federalism inherent in the Constituion, there is no such thing as an elective office that has a national consituency. No elective office has a breadth greater than the boundaries of a state. That's why the Electoral College exists in the first place. The Constitution NEVER assumed or presumed that political enfranchisement was uniform across the entire nation. Indeed, that's where its weakness lies and why we constantly have these arguments about (so-called) "states rights" and the power of the Federal government. The United States, as envisioned by the Constitution, is far more akin to the U.S.S.R - with 'autonomous' countries under a treaty (Warsaw Pact) instead of uniform and contiguous countries. While other free nations employ subsidary political units as adminnstrative conveniences, the 50 states of the United States were deemed superior to the Federal government in the same sense that the People were considered superior to the states themselves. Thus, the right to vote is enfranchised at the state level, not the Federal. Indeed, there's nothing at the Federal level that would say someone can't be enfranchised to vote in more than one state!! Thus, it's clearly a right - it's just limited to a state level that the People (guaranteed a republican form of government by the Constitution - i.e. to vote at all) keep one person's exercise of their equal right to vote from being violated by some other person's over-reach. The only purpose of any legisation regarding the vote can be one of ensuring that no person's rights are infringed upon by another's.

[merwin]

40. But if the states decided to ignore an election

and just choose the electors without a vote by the people of that state, it's perfectly legal (as long as the state laws are not violated).

[TahitiNut]

42. That would be in violation of Article IV. Section 4 of the Constitution.

"Section 4.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, ..."

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/article04/18.html#2

[merwin]

45. The people elect the state congress/judes, and

the state congress/judges choose the electors. That's one example of a "republican form of government" where the people don't choose the electors.

The people do not choose the president. It's as easy as that. Electors can vote however they want, and as was shown this week, at least one has already voted for Edwards instead of Kerry.

[progressivebydesign]

32. As a Washington Resident who had her ballot spit out.... I disagree

I find your comments about someone being 'too stupid to vote' incredibly offensive. Did you know that ballots are rejected because the line wasn't dark enough? Or that a smudge got onto the page somehow? Or you forgot to check one little box (as I did?). Or there is a tiny flaw in the paper ballot that goes thru the scanner? Deeming people too stupid to vote or have a say in the government is positively caveman-like.

I want ALL the ballots counted.. ALL of them. The optical scanners are too IFFY to ignore.

[Ed C. Finley]

43. Caveman-like?

I'll Have you know that I have much better hygiene than your run of the mill caveman}( .

[customerserviceguy]

44. I was a ballot counter

in Grays Harbor County, and at my table, we found one precinct where Gregoire picked up a vote. The machine, for some reason, didn't read the mark the voter put in, and called it an undervote (in other words, no vote for governor on that ballot). All three of us looked at every Gregoire vote in the stack, and concluded that every one in that stack belonged there. It really wasn't voter stupidity.

I will comment on this, though, I'd like to know why Christine Gregoire didn't make this election look like the cakewalk it should have been. Enough people in a solidly blue state voted for a total unknown Republican candidate to make this a nail-biter. I've lived in WA for over 35 years, and the last time a Republican won a major statewide race for the first time was 1980. Before that, it was Slade Gorton winning the Attorney General's office in 1968 that Gregoire has spent the last twelve years serving in.

And the 1980 race was a special circumstance, we had a sitting incumbent Democratic governor (Dixy Lee Ray) lose her nomination to Jim McDermott. No doubt a lot of Ray supporters (she tended to be rather conservative for a Democrat) voted for John Spellman, the Republican that year, which was also the year that Warren Magnuson lost his Senate seat after holding it for about thirty years. Not to mention that Reagan carried the state by more than a couple percentage points. What's Gregoire's excuse? Patty Murray handily won her Senate seat, and John Kerry got a healthy percentage of the WA state Presidential vote, so you can't blame a Republican tide for the cliffhanger.

[Gregorian]

25. Won't they just recount the recount?

I know I shouldn't have asked. Recount; Recanvass; Re, re, re...
I don't know enough to even understand what they're talking about when I watched it on Cspan. But it seems like a neverending battle of distrust, if you know what I mean. At least until the clock runs out. I suppose the answer lies in the details of the laws, somewhere, and I'm just not aware of it. But I thought I heard one of the repub lawyers talking about this so-called problem.

[merwin]

26. As I said in a previous response, you can only recount

twice in Washington. It's in the law.

[TahitiNut]

30. Any ballot not counted by some machine hasn't even been counted once.

The failure of some mechanical process to reliably count a ballot cannot be deemed a 'count.' 'Rejected' ballots are uncounted, and any subsequent manual count can only be regarded as the first count, not a 'recount'.

[merwin]

33. Yes, but again, in Washington law

you can only re-count what was counted the first time. So, if it was discarded the first time, you're SOL

[skysurfer]

31. What is the issue?

The representative from the Elections board plainly said that it was THEIR fault for not checking for the original paper files of signatures. No one should have their legitimate vote discarded because elections workers didn't do their job correctly.

[merwin]

37. And those 561 are going to be counted (provided they are legit)