--was ruled to be not relevant. The administrative screwups did not amount to an
organized attempt at fraud. I am on several local lists where the issue of whether Dems should have gone along with a revote just to add legitimacy to the Gregoire governorship.
My reply--
For progressives to have gone along with a revote would have been a very dicey strategy, IMO. The only plus that I can see is that if we had been able to force Snohomish County to go with all mail-in optical scan voting, Gregoire would have gained several thousand votes. The machines there cheated in favor of Rossi either by accident or by design (and we aren't allowed to investigate to find out one way or another due to "proprietary" software).
http://www.votersunite.org/info/SnohomishElectionFraudInvestigation.pdfhttp://www.votersunite.org/info/lehtolawsuit.asp But if we had not been able to enforce that option, a revote would most likely have been equally close, even though it would have been a different election (a separate problem, and another reason not to have a revote). The simple fact is that it is not possible with voting technologies now available to know who really got the most votes. The three counts were within 0.01% of each other, but the most accurate machines, optical scanners, have a 0.2% error rate. Hand counting with the double and triple checking that was done here lowers that to 0.1%, still not good enough. It's like trying to measure 1/32 inches with a ruler that only has 1/4" divisions.
If an election was like a sewing or woodworking project, you'd just get a ruler with small enough divisons or give up on the project. Not an option for an election, as we had to inagurate a governor in January. Since statistics and engineering couldn't solve our problem, we were stuck with doing things by the book legally, and that process said that Gregoire did indeed win.
One good thing that came out of the recounts is that they established that known vulnerabilities of the Diebold tabulation software were not exploited in our state. There are two points where data can be fiddled. One is the precinct tapes, the totals of which are correlated with the precinct sign-in sheets. This happened in Volusia County, Florida--Andy Stephenson saw original signed tapes thrown out--new ones were apparently printed with results more pleasing to the Bush family.
The Diebold software also has the capacity to add negative votes--in 2000 (Volusia again) minus 16,000 was added to Gore's tally which prompted his first concession. The tabulator can also be easily hacked, as recently demonstrated (See below note from the Rapid Response Network--some LTEs might be in order with a verdict tie-in.)
But if either of those things had happened here, the three gubernatorial counts could not have been so close. eridani
http://www.blogforamerica.com/archives/006422.htmlhttp://www.leonfl.org/elect/SpecialReport.htmIn January of this year Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho was contacted by representatives of Black Box Voting .org, a non-partisan elections advocacy group, to see if their computer experts could successfully circumvent the security of the Leon County voting system. Supervisor Sancho agreed to this proposal and in three separate attempts over a four month period, computer experts Dr. Herbert Thompson and Harri Hursti visited the Leon County Elections Office in their efforts to penetrate the county voting tabulation equipment and alter election data.
Granted the same access as an employee of our office, it was possible to enter the computer, alter election results, and exit the system without leaving any physical record of this action. It was also demonstrated that false information or instructions could be placed on a memory card (the device used to program the individual voting machines and record the voter’s votes) and create false results or election reports.
<snip>
Finally, the ultimate insurance that Leon County’s votes are counted correctly resides in the paper ballots of the voters themselves. If the public or election official has any question over the results of an election, a hand count of the optical paper ballot provides the truth. No internal manipulation of any computer or memory card can alter the votes on these paper ballots.
Based upon the data developed out of this exercise it is the opinion of the Leon County Supervisor of Elections that any effort to limit or remove the manual examination of paper ballots to confirm the correctness of election results is not in the public interest.M. D-Wh. wrote:
Your view, J. My understanding of cases of this nature is that if coordinated fraud (rather than individual fraud) cannot be shown, there was no basis for a revote.
As for the appeal, the only basis is whether the judge's dismissal was an abuse of discretion--I'm digging out some cobwebs, but I believe that's true. Again, I will call on my practicing colleagues for further clarification.
No handwringing on this end, I'm afraid. As for the rest of the state, it depends on what questions voters were asked and who is polling.
Our state money can be spent on better things than pacifying (word intended) Rossi and his followers with a revote. Besides, the concept in itself defies logic. Think about it: another vote a year later than the original vote with a different population voting--what would make that more legitimate than the original vote if coordinated fraud cannot be shown?
My guess is that the GOP really wanted an aggrieved loser to run against Cantwell rather than a winning litigant to run against Gregoire. Look for Dino again in 2006.
M. D-Wh.
----- Original Message -----
From: J S
In my opinion, this is a short-term victory for Democrats, but a very dark day for progressives.
Centrists will say that Gregoire proved again that fence-straddling, issue-averse Republican-lite campaigns are winning campaigns for Democrats. More than half the state at this time still questions the legitimacy of our Governor, is mistrustful of the Democrats and sympathetic to Rossi. No matter how well Gregoire does in office (and she's been doing far better than we expected), she is doomed to being a one-term Governor. A re-vote would have at least saved the credibility of our Party with the people of WA State. This victory, if upheld by the Supremes, is a huge blow to the progressive programme and will be ultimately as bad for the Democratic Party in the State of Washington as a John Kerry win would have been disasterous for the Democratic Party nationally.
J.
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