Wash. governor's race: GOP mulls next step, demands voter list

[Newsjock]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20041227-1349-wst-governorrecount.html

By David Ammons
ASSOCIATED PRESS

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Washington Republicans, considering whether to challenge Democrat Christine Gregoire's razor-thin victory for governor, on Monday demanded a list of the 900,000 who cast ballots in vote-rich, problem-plagued King County.

Republican state Chairman Chris Vance said the party and other backers of GOP candidate Dino Rossi have nagging questions about the vote-count in the county that tipped the race to Gregoire by a scant 130 votes last week.

... The Republicans' latest demand came as a public records request filed with King County Elections Director Dean Logan. The GOP wants a list of all voters who submitted ballots in the Nov. 2 general election, including ballots that were counted as well as those that were rejected, so that they may begin deciding how to proceed and whether to contest the election.

more

[trotsky]

1. Right after we get the voter lists in Ohio. Deal?

eom

[Stinky The Clown]

5. bingo!

n/t

[hollowdweller]

10. Ohio is different..They won there. Requesting a list is being a sore loser

[RevolutionaryActs]

2. What are they going to do once they get the list?

Call the people? Call them and ask them who they voted for, and if you say you voted for Gregoire, then come and kick your ass?

[Florida_Geek]

3. what will that tell them,

not who the people voted for just their names.

[Pithy Cherub]

4. The WA repubs are just about ready to sign on the line for

fully transparent elections everywhere, right? ;)

[gratuitous]

6. The deadline for filing a challenge to the results has passed

There is no provision in Washington state law, as far as I know, that would allow for any further challenges to the results as they stand now. Sorry Dino, you lost. Get over it. The votes have been counted, re-counted, and hand-counted. Move anything you've brought into Christine's office the hell out of there.

[pa28]

7. All legal ballots have been counted with a manual audit.

The Republican SOS says it's over. The State Supreme Court gave Rossi his walking papers.

This is starting to get sad now. Rossi might need psychiatric counseling or medication.

[maxsolomon]

9. suck it chris vance

i think rossi will be fine.

"chris" gregoire better run a tight ship this term; every AM radio station in seattle is gunning for her. no more "fogetting" to file for 20 million dollars, 'k?

[MaineDem]

8. The list of those who voted is public record

But it won't say whom they voted for or whether the vote was contested...unless, perhaps, it was absentee.

Maybe it IS the absentees that are the questions, if I remember correctly. But either side should be able to get the list of those who actually voted.

[kurtyboy]

11. Utter Crap---King County is 14th (of 39) most error prone

"We're mostly posing questions," he said. "King County is where we saw the votes changing. King County is the one county that was allowed to take ballots that were declared dead in November and bring them back to life in December."

See this thread I started in the Washington forum for more details:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

On a percentage basis, King County was in the middle-third of accuracy in terms of the number of "discrepancies" between the second machine count and the manual recount.

13 counties had a higher percentage of "discrepancies" than King---
Asotin .174%
Franklin .158%
Pierce .144%
Kitsap .137%
Okanogan .118%
Adams .098%
Mason .092%
Skamania .081%
Walla Walla .079%
Yakima .076%
Jefferson .076%
Snohomish .070%
Grays Harbor .065%
King .063%


Of these counties, Eight favored Rossi (Asotin, Franklin, Kitsap, Okanogan, Mason, Skamania, Walla Walla, Yakima) and five favored Gregoire--None were neutral, in net votes.

Only five counties, statewide, were unchanged in count from the second machine to the manual (Ferry, Garfield, Kittitas, Klickitat, and Lincoln) and they represent just 1.25% of the state's votes.

NOT ONE SINGLE COUNTY'S TALLY remains unchanged from the first machine count--not even those relying on touchscreens.

NOT ONE!!

Recounts are good. They are more accurate. I wish we'd have been able to use them in Florida in 2000....

King County ends with one of the most clean counts in the state--.009%--only the five counties with zero changes, and Chelan county with .003%, outperformed King, without the extra votes added.

And Gregoire still won, by that reckoning, by ten votes.

The GOP is barking up the wrong tree by blaming King Co, and Chris Vance really has his head up his ass by claiming fraud. If King County committed fraud, they certainly would have done it in a more spectacular fashion than one vote out of every 11,769--that is what their discrepancies ratio works out to in this scenario (The security of the "new" votes has never been in question...).

Asotin County, mentioned above, "found" five new net votes for Rossi (actually ten, and five for Gregoire) in their manual recount--a ratio of one vote discrepancy out of every 576. Let's send the detectives over there!! (Kidding, of course).

If GOP ranters complain about King County making stuff up, fling the facts at 'em! They hate facts, and they usually pipe-down when confronted by them...

Of the first thirteen error-prone counties, Pierce went to Rossi in a big way, by 12,500 votes. In fact, Rossi won the vote total in the first thirteen counties by 57,791--with 1007 total discrepancies.

This is almost DOUBLE King County's discrepancy total of 553. And the average discrepancy rate for the first thirteen-- .108%, compared to King County at .063%. Yeah, Chris Vance, you frigin' loser, King County sure looks like the place to start hunting for votes! BTW, the first thirteen have a bigger voting population than King, 935,943 to 876,452.

But the GOP are building a case for the local echo chamber MSM to bleat back to the public---never mind the facts. Trouble is, the local press has not completely taken the bait--yet.

King County ran a good election under more intense scrutiny than any other county in the state. Now the GOP is fishing for a couple of hundred different votes to contest--so they can get their runoff.

It shorewoulda been nice if Al Gore had had the same opportunity four years ago....

What the Dems ought to do locally is hunt down a few of the same in the bigger (population) GOP counties--Pierce, Snohomish, Kitsap, and Yakima. Yakima will be the most promising, I should think, with their utter reliance on touchscreen voting. With enough countering evidence, the waters will be muddy enough that eventually the courts will rule that a certain level of discrepancies are to be expected, and no amount of runooffs and recounts can remedy the situation.

Cut it off where the law already does--call it a day after the manual recount.

[spotbird]

12. Give them the list,

we should have nothing to hide.

Do we have billboards up demanding Rossi go the way of the other dinosaurs? It is time for him to concede, like it or not.

[AP]

13. And Dems should ask for a list of FL voters to compare to WA voters so

they can eliminate all those Republican voters who vote in both states. (They should probably cross check with NV and AZ too.)