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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.
Before this latest gain for the Dems, the Republicans where telling the Dems to quit crying and just give in, that resorting to the courts was proff they where all cry babies. I wonder if their tune will change now.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
See, you're not the only one that can screw up an election! And I'm not just talking about Ohio, either. Nossir, we'll be in the record books for good. Or until the next guys come along.
Man, I really hope we have a governor soon.
What's the big problem?
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
... about WA state is its geography. King County is very big population wise and very Democratic. The counties to the west of the Cascades (which divide the state N-S about 1/4 of the way E from the ocean), are all blue to purple and then all of the counties to the east of the Cascades are blood red republican. Rossi won most of the counties in the state, but King County's population (along with neighboring Snohomish County) almost has the power to make all of those moot. It's like Texas, California and New York all rolled into one. So when Gregoire does win - which I hope she does - it'll really set the stage for a Seattle vs rest-of-the-state animosity that will take years to resolve.
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. How many car accidents statewide were there on the day of the ballot... How many people couldn't get to the polling booths due to bad health etc. Why not just flip a coin to decide who gets in, it would probably have just as much meaning.
This seems to imply with a note of sarcasm that the state Supreme Court is ruling against itself. I haven't been following your state's results as closely as you have, but this does not seem true to me. From my skimming of the link you gave to the Dec. 14 decision, I see that decision was regarding whether the Supreme Court could order the Secretary of State to order counties to re-check previously rejected ballots. That the Supreme Court refused to order this to be done does not in any way mean it, as you write, "disallowed" it from being done. This seems to me a fairly trivial point.
From the decision you linked to:
And the Supreme Court goes on to address precisely the contradiction I think you're raising, in its second decision, making itself quite clear:
(My emphasis.)
The first decision seems quite clearly limited in its scope, in such a way that there is no contradiction in the second. The Seattle Times story you link to agrees with me on this. If you disagree, you owe it to our readers either to disclose that your disagreement is your opinion, or to explain clearly and factually what parts of the two decisions contradict each other. As I say, you've been studying this a lot longer and more carefully than I have, so maybe I'm all wrong on this. I'd like to see what you have to say about it -- in detail, not just implied in part of one sentence.
My suspicion is that "the Washington Supreme Court contradicted itself, so Gregoire's election is illegitimate" may shortly become part of the GOP's talking points, so this is no small matter.
This blog has some startling facts that you should familiarize yourself with.
* 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.
* 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.
* Interesting notes as one of the bloggers investigates the voting rolls. Fraud, anyone?
* Everyone in Washington State now admits that King County has not been following state law in the elections process. Even the Seattle Weekly isn't ashamed to admit it. King County may have been throwing off close elections for the past 10 years.
Check out the information on that blog, consider it scientifically and with an open mind, and draw your own conclusion.
As for me, it's obvious. The democrats have successfully stolen the election, and I have proof.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
...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*.
Random events aren't nearly as big a threat as things that have non-random effects.
In everything from the allocation of resources to polling places to the determination of the order of candidates, non-random, systematic "errors" can be surprisingly powerful in a democracy such as ours.
--MarkusQ
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
is not to find out who really won, it's to recount until you win (both sides).
the Political Inquirer
Ye Gods America, who is running your elections? The lawyers or the TV networks?
Call me a proud Washington voter.
Plus, I volunteered to get out the vote, so I may be responsible for more votes than my own.
If there's one lesson to take from these last two elections, it's that voting matters.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
It's a problem when some votes are double counted in the machine count, or not counted at all due to mechanical error.
It's a problem when voters who followed the rules when voting, don't have their vote counted due to officials messing up.
It's a problem when both sides can't agree to simply have every vote count.
Personally, I'd prefer Gregoire to win over Rossi. But still, no matter the results, I'd rather have a run-off when the election is this close.
what I want to know is why isn't this same thing happening with the national elections? Sure, the first recount was tripped automatically because of a close election, but all the shenigans that follow are a result of people thinking there's something wrong with the system.
Is there _anyone_ that doesn't think something is wrong with our national system?
Blech.
1. 2.
Merely being a male does not support those males who rape. It does offer some obligation to stop male rapists, especially as you are in a better position to do so than a woman. If rape were an organized group activity with members paying and recruiting, or being male were voluntary upon turning 18, you would be ethically obligated to work to oppose rape. If changing gender merely took you out of the complicit association with the rapists, you would be obligated to do so if you wouldn't oppose the males. But since such a change would make you a victim, you would be ethically able to become neutered instead, if you were just interested in avoiding all association with the raping in your life - though you would have just raped yourself, permanently.
Political corruption is forever. As is, apparently, rape. But there are phases of intensity. Tammany Hall and Watergate were crimes of past Democrats and Republicans. Looking at the two parties right now, for the past 20 years, and for the next - that is, your lifetime - it's clear that the Republicans are engaged in raping America to an unprecedented degree, unmatched by the Democrats. Congratulations: you can leave the Republicans, and keep your balls. What does party membership do for you, anyway? What would you give up? Apart from being on the side that's winning, through more and better rape? And if you stay, what *are* you doing to stop your Republican Party from its crimes?
--
make install -not war
The vast majority of Republicans are good and honest people. Our party has been usurped by a small, vicious band of "Neo-Cons" who claim to speak for us, but do not. This exactly parallels the national situation; the vast majority of Americans are good and honest people, but their country has been usurped by the same jerks.
Now, in addition to being dishonest the usurpers are also devious. One of their favorite tricks is to sow conflict amongst their enimies. Presently, they have the good and honest Americans divided into two roughly equal camps, and have them convinced that they have nothing in common--so there's no point in banding together to route out corruption. Besides (as they paint it) the problem isn't really corruption, it's red vs. blue, and which ever colour you got assigned you should blame everything on the entirety of the other team.
I, on the other hand, am doing my best to convince people of both parties that the real enemy is the corrupt politicians of both parties. We can always go back to fighting amonst ourselves about who should pay for health care, and how much, once we make sure we won't be living in a police state run by the people who "count" our votes--or a glass crater created by other nations holding us all accountable for the acts of a few, just as you want to hold all Republicans accountable for the acts of a few.
--MarkusQ
You don't follow the news much either, do you? The election workers followed the same procedure they had in the primary. This was part of the way they did things, it was not a simple mistake.
And the Republicans were arguing to follow the previous Supreme Court decision that stated that the hand recount was to be a retabulation, not a reconsideration of previously rejected ballots. That the canvassing board had already rejected these ballots is not in question. The only question is whether the Supreme Court sill preserved all the discretion to the county canvassing boards, and they affirmed yesterday that they did.
Note that there's only one case so far in this entire affair where a judge has ruled to change the law, and that was in King County, where Judge Lam violated federal law by compelling the county to provide lists of provisional voters and their personal information to the Democrats.
I note that they don't think people who've had their legal votes rejected should be able to have some sort of redress
You note a lie. Goody for you!
How about this, ever legal vote should count.
No one ever disputed that. You're just showing your own abject ignorance by contending otherwise. The question is what constitutes a legal vote, not whether legal votes should count.
And legality shouldn't be determined by the convience of the counter, or the would-be victor seeking to preserve a margin, but by whether the voter did the minimum that was necessary to register their vote in good faith.
No. It should be determined by the law. That's what "legal" means. And Washington law does not recognize "the minimum that was necessary to register their vote in good faith" as its standard.
For example, the law states, "A ballot is invalid and no votes on that ballot may be counted if it is found folded together with another ballot or it is marked so as to identify the voter." Even if the voter registered his vote in good faith, it is invalid under those conditions. Sorry. That's the law, and the law is what determines legality.
I would submit that anyone who suggest anything short of that test, is a fucking coward, a freind to tyrants, and a foe of freedom, deserving of only the inequities they would foist on others.
I submit that anyone who suggests anything different from the law as that test is an anarchist or a moron. You're spouting unintelligent rhetoric that sounds good to people who don't know any better (which may include yourself).
It was a mistake that had been oft repeated but that all it was.
It is only a mistake if it was not intentional. This was intentional. It may have been an error, but it was not a mistake. It was policy.
You seem to want to read something that isn't there. I'm clearly speaking to the amiguity which exists in the law
The Anonymous Coward I was replying to was not clear, no. That Anonymous Coward said, "legality shouldn't be determined by the convience of the counter, or the would-be victor seeking to preserve a margin, but by whether the voter did the minimum that was necessary to register their vote in good faith."
I don't know what you meant, but what that Anonymous Coward said was quite clear.
And I stated the obvious: that this standard is not reasonable, because the law is more restrictive than that standard.
The law seems clear to me. Legal votes should be counted.
A blue sky is blue!
And where there is room for interpretation, the perspective should be from the position of protecting the wronged voter.
The voter is only "wronged" if we assume that their vote should count, which is precisely the question at issue. You're speaking circularly.
Worse for you, these standards *are* defined in the law. You're just trying to pull out of a hat some arbitrary definition of what you think is fair. The law defines these things. We are a nation of laws.
Maybe it would help -- though I doubt it -- if you gave a specific example of where there is room for interpretation in the law, that is relevant to the present case. We know the court already violated the law in the first lawsuit, giving out personal information about provisional voters. The law was not ambiguous there, but they violated it anyway. Then there's the present case about the rights of the canvassing board to correct mistakes, which many people found to be ambiguous after the first ruling a couple of weeks ago, and which is no longer ambiguous, following yesterday's ruling.
I've never seen anything in the papers about either Rossi or the Republicans encouraging the disenfranchies to seek redress from the government
OK, so to your mind, the fact that you don't see them support X, that not only means they do not support X, but they are actually *against* X.
That's pretty sad.
Does this give you any faith in the system? I sure as hell don't want to blame a side as much as I want to say the american voting system just isn't good enough to deal with the fact that our nation is split 50/50.
.001% of a vote that probably had a .2% rate of error and/or fraud. By opening the whole can of worms in the court they cause the very problem they are trying to avoid: a failure of trust in the system and it's results.
Not really. It's not that the system is particularly bad... it's just that even the best of systems will have some small margin of error, and that the margin of victory in this election (and Florida 2000) are within that margin of error. At such a small margin of victory the decision comes down to random chance not "the will of the people."
The best thing to do would be to have iron-clad rules before hand & simply follow them... The problem is that with fierce partisans on either side the rules will be challenged on any and every basis by whichever side loses and our courts are only too willing to step in to split hairs over grand principles of "fairness" applied to
The result is that now people don't trust elections whose outcomes are NOT in serious dispute... where the margin of victory well exceeds any errors or likely fraud. Look at the obsession with Ohio with a close but clear 2.1% margin of victory. I'm sure if the shoe were on the other foot we'd be hearing from Republicans about machine politics in Philadelphia. (PA was decided by 2.3%) or allegations of fraud by Democratic 527's in Wisconsin. (A truly close race decided by 0.4% ).
I have real concerns about the possibility of fraud by both newfangled digital means and old-fashioned ballot box stuffing/dead people voting kind. But margins of victory in the hundreds of thousands are not seriously disputable and it's "win at any cost" lawsuits and the overheated rhetoric of activist lawyers that make them appear so. For all their public protestations of devotion to high principles these lawsuits are doing real persistent damage to the practice of democracy in our country.
I voted for Bennett. I would have voted for Gregoire second, if we had IRV. I wouldn't vote for Locke, he doesn't seem to care much about our broken tax system.
I also heard that Rossi wants to have Creationism taught in school, and Roe vs. Wade overturned. Not sure if it's true, but if it is, that's really extremist unlike the moderate-conservative stance I heard he is.
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
"The result is that now people don't trust elections whose outcomes are NOT in serious dispute."
If by "people" you mean "a small faction of Democrats," then you are correct. Most people from both parties believe there was no foul play in Ohio (at least not enough to turn the tide of the election). The biggest problem faced in the 2004 Presidential election was the exit polls being leaked. Though they were within the margin of error, they all gave Kerry most of the margin.
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.
I believe it's safe to say that no one likes filling out forms, whether paying taxes, filing for government assistance, or just general business stuff.
I believe it's safe to say that no one likes being forced to pay taxes on business income.
I believe it's safe to say that no one likes being poor.
I believe a compromise is this...
Keep taxes as is, just do a few slight modifications. We have 6.5 state sales tax (then localities add on more). Raise the state sales tax by 1-3 cents on the dollar, and give univeral rebates to all 6.1 million Washingtonians. That will help the poor some. I figured if 1 cent equals $1 billion in revenue, then this could very well work.
I wish our future governor would do this. As the executive of the state, the one who carries out the laws, he or she could one, halt the death penalty citing that it's cruel and unusual, especially with the chance someone may be innocent. And two, halt foreclosures on homes based on government leans due to medicare/medicaid/whatever. Instead they could just take the house when it's unoccupied by anyone.
Election reform. I would think it would be a good idea to fix our system by doing this...
1. Implement Instant Runoff Voting.
2. Whether or not we implement IRV, write this into law. "Anytime there is an one percent difference between the top two candidates in a plurality race, there will be a run-off election. Additionally, in the run-off election, a machine count would be forbidden, just skipping down to a hand recount, no matter what the cost is to tax payers."
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
Since the democrats are so obviously evil for their role in this, it might be fun to note the turn things have taken not that Gregiore leads by 130 votes.
The Republicans did something similar. They tracked down people who voted for Rossi, but didn't sign the affidavit of a voter on their absentee ballot. No. They're not the victims of less than dilligent election workers, they just can't read clearly printed instructions on what they must do in order to properly cast their ballot. And somehow the view the situations of these voters as somehow similar. Further more, they only propose to count the votes of the limited number of people they've found, not the entire population of absentee ballots without a signed affidavit. But no, they're not hypocrits, and it's unfair to characterize their championing the cause of institutionalized unfairness as anything but filled with charity and christ love. What a joke.
Wow--my spelling is horrible on this keyboard I'm not used to and without the magic spellcheck extension. I hope that my message is not lost in the careless mistakes...otherwise I'd have to invest the time and expense in a retyping......
Rossi and Gregoire are both rather weak, divisive candidates. The problem is the first-past-the-post system tends to produce such candidates. Alternative voting systems like approval voting or Condorcet Voting would get around much of this problem