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Democrat Takes 10-Vote Lead in WA Governor Race
Two major developments in the apparently neverending Washington state governor's race happened on Wednesday. As the second recount wound down, with 38 of 39 counties reporting -- all but the heavily Democratic-leaning King County -- Republican Dino Rossi extended his lead from 42 votes to 49. Then, the state Supreme Court ruled that its December 14 decision which disallowed including new ballots in the hand recount did not preclude county canvassing boards from including new ballots, which paves the way for 735 previously rejected ballots in King County to be processed. Then, King County announced that its hand recount (not including the 735) swung toward Democrat Christine Gregoire by 59 votes, giving her a 10-vote lead statewide (1,373,051 to 1,373,041). More court challenges are likely to follow.
Rejecting a legally held election is necessarily a big problem. You're invalidating the stated will of the people. Plus, it would cost many millions of dollars.
Not necessarily worse than manufacturing votes...
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I should add that the same Dem-Rep breakdown will occur if Rossi wins, and it might be even more acid given the drubbing we Dems have taken over the past five years. I think Wa and Fl are in some type of quantum entanglement...
* Statistically speaking, Rossi is still considered the winner unless Gregoire pulls out with a 300 vote lead. This is pure math, folks, nothing more, nothing less.
No. She is the winner if she has a 1-vote lead. You don't average out the previous counts. The result of the current recount is the result, period. It's simple law, folks.
* A survey of the voters in Washington showed that if Rossi wins, he should be declared the winner. However. the majority feel that if Gregoire wins, we should have a runoff election.
What the majority feel is irrelevant. What the law says is what matters.
* Everyone in Washington State now admits that King County has not been following state law in the elections process.
In some respects, perhaps, but the question is whether they are following the law properly *now,* and the Supreme Court just ruled in its favor, and the Republican Secretary of State is on the county's side in this matter.
...is a recount considered more accurate than the original count? If a recount doesn't agree with the figures from a prevoius counting, shouldn't they count it again until they get two countings that match? That way there couldn't be any dispute. Why is a "margin of error" tolerated, especially when the difference in votes is so close? The numbers should be *exact*.
Huh? Those are not 735 Democrat ballots ... and they were initially rejected because a *Democrat-controlled* canvassing board decided to reject them.
The problem isn't Democrats vs. Republicans, it's honest people of both parties vs. corrupt people of either party.
I happen to be a Republican, but I'm quite willing to accept Democratic politicians when they win honestly. When they win by cheating, I want to see them (and/or whoever cheated on their behalf) behind bars. Likewise, when someone "of my party" cheats to win, I want them nailed.
The problem is, it's very hard to get the leaders of either party to take a stand on this issue because they know (as many of us are begining to realize) just how often there is cheating by both parties. Instead, they try to get is tangled up with us vs. them debates as if one side was pure as the driven snow and the other was corrupt to the core. That's not the way it is.
There are a lot of honest people in both parties. They are being run into the ground by the cheats, and "we the people" need to put a stop to it.
--MarkusQ
It seems that if there is such a close race that there is only 10 votes in it, then it's not really democracy that's deciding the winner of this. Instead it comes down to combinations of random events.
Yes.
But before you get too upset about it, remember that Democracy here has basically stated that it "doesn't care" which one wins.
Thus, the real issue here is getting a happy loser more than obtaining a winner; practically speaking they both won or lost equally and "fair" or "meaning" really isn't on the table here, since they can't share the office.
Abstractly, this is just something that happens every so often; short-term exciting, but not worth getting too upset over in the long term. Concretely, if it makes people more aware of the pervasive voting fraud that is always done by both sides, some good might even come of it.
I would say the spectical is a shameful. And most of that is on the republicans and their ceasless whining at this point. But if you live here, and you can see the process proceed as smoothly as it has, with all the animus involved, in a strange way it's heartening.
I'm talking to other Republicans, pointing out things like 1) isn't it odd that so many of us object to Bush, yet (according to the media) we all support him, 100%? 2) what's "conservative" about spending like there's no tomorrow, invading other countries based on lies, etc.? 3) My "moral values" don't include sending people with guard dogs to other countries so they can force people to mastrabate, do yours?
And so forth...
What keeping my registration does for me is give credibility to my points. I'm not the one walking away from what we stand for, Bush is. He's the one who should change to another party. The rest of us will get along quite nicely without him.
So, one way I differ from you: I don't withhold aid based on how I think people will vote. Instead, I try to make sure that everyone has full access to the facts, and expect that they will make rational choices.As for your argument about the Neo-cons using "the bulk" of the Republican party, etc., doesn't the same thing apply to the country as a whole? Have you given up your citizenship, or refused to pay taxes?
But to push the point further--why do you think most Republicans support the Neo-con agenda? Because the administration tells you so? Aren't they the same people who've been telling the world that America gave them a mandate? And that the Iraqi's love them? And so many other things...why would you believe them?
On that, I 100% agree.--MarkusQ
You're absolutely right. And part of the law is the role of the Judiciary to interpret the law. The decisions of the court bear legal weight, and must be acknowledged as law even if you don't agree with them. Of course, IF indeed you do not agree with the judiciary's decision, your recourse is to appeal that decision to a higher court. When the highest court to rule on the issue has done so, the final decision stands unless the letter of the law is changed by the legislature. So, if the courts have ruled in favor of this recount, then this recount is LEGAL. Just like when the Supreme Court ruled against Florida's recount it was LEGAL. Of course in 2000 we had Democrats crying when the courts ruled against them, and now have Republicans crying because the courts ruled against them. Cry all you want, but unless a higher court overturns the decision, the recount is legal and part of the Rule of Law. Just like it was in 2000.
My book, Statistics for Experimentors disagrees. It's a little dusty and a little dry, but I can personally assure you it's quite thorough.
For somethings, but perhaps not political choices, a careful sample can produce more accurate results than a process like voting for determining a state of a population. But while voting's intent is to measure the will of the people, it is the only measure that matters irreguardless whether other methods are more accurate. And at the end of a process, such as Washington is going through, the count, is "by definition" exact. As inaccurate a measure it might be.
Different processes yeild different results. And statistics instructs us that should we examine through three different methods we should expect slightly different results, but if in fact if the more accurate results fell within the margins of error of the less accurate methods, we really only got one result and unwisely chose to draw conclusions from random noise in the data. If Bush leads by 2 points in a poll with a margin of error of 3 points, he doesn't lead, it's a tie. That 2 point lead might be real, it might not, we can't tell without a more accurate poll.
Since no "count" is perfect, it reasonable to save only the most expensive, exhaustive and extensive counting methods for the situations that demand it no? Why spend more resources than necessary to determine the outcome of an election? And so the law has exactly those kinds of money and time saving provisions already in place. And this is the very rare year where they just happen to be required. It is our misfortune to suffer through it, and our great fortune to have benefited from the foresight of those who planned for it.
At the end of the ordeal, the vote totals certified are exact, and completely counted as a matter of definition. They offer finality. The one great benefit of a VERY inexact system. I don't have to trust in some form of idealized good will. No. I can trust in the inate curiosity, the pride, and other very human traits of my fellows. Or I can give in and participate myself. I could have volunteered to count votes, or protest, or participate as an observer to keep an eye on things. And there are TV camera crews, security, life long bureaucrats whom I suspect are glad for the opportunity to see our system function in this way. There might be dark corners where untoward things happen. But there have been many eyes from deeply divided and keenly interested parties, and the only argument boils down to a highly symmantec argument over what "counting" means if you add a "re--" to it. That, to me, is VERY reassuring.
this is how florida 2000 would have played out had the court not stepped in. Now, the question remains, what is to stop the republicans from recounting till they win? which recount is the final one? especially with a 10 vote margin.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I'm going to have to ask for clarification on your statement, because our "national system" is pretty much controlled on a state-by-state basis, even for the Presidential election. The only truly federally-controlled part of the election is the tabulation of electoral votes and the declaration of the winner based on those votes, and I don't think anybody has said that any shenanigans have ruined that part of the process, regardless of what people think of the electoral college itself.
Before we discuss everything else, just keep in mind that Democrats won the recount even without these extra ballots, which makes the whole rest of this debate academic. This isn't the "oops we found a box with only democratic ballots in it" Thing that happened during Johnson's Texas senate bid in 1948. These are verified ballots that were, basically, intially rejected do to incompetance. It was only caught because the Democratic county Chairman's ballot was one of the rejected ones. On closer inspection, they found that 700-odd ballots were completely rejected by mistake. The Republican Secretary of state agrees that these ballots were rejected by accident. And if you are still skeptical, the ballots split 4-3 [Gregoire-Rossi], which is a similar margin to the rest of the ballots from King County. And if you are still skeptical, then I'm sorry, your just being an illogical partisan [something I've been guilty of sometimes, I admit]