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Democrat Certified Winner in WA Governor Race
Washington's secretary of state certified the result of the hand recount (the third count) in the governor's race, reversing the first two results -- which Republican Dino Rossi had won -- and making Democrat Christine Gregoire the election's second governor-elect, by 129 votes out of 2.9 million. The inauguration is January 12. Predictably, the two sides have switched arguments, too, with the Democrats saying Rossi should concede and the Republicans saying they have a duty to make sure the will of the people is followed. The next step may be an election contest, which could take months, and result in a court awarding the victory to a candidate, nullifying the entire election, or sending the matter to the legislature. Rossi is calling for the legislature to pass a special law calling for a new election, which would bypass a contest procedure.
Re-vote. Not recount. "Rossing is asking for a re-vote" ... Sorry.
The hypocrisy of the Democrats here would be stunning if it weren't so predictable.
The democrats followed the election through the legal steps of the initial count, a machine recount, and then a hand recount.
Rossi was the winner of the first count by 261 votes. After that, the Republicans started asking Gregoire to concede.
Then, Rossi won the machine recount by 42 votes. After that, the Republicans started demanding Gregoire to concede.
Then, Gregoire won the hand recount by 129 votes. After that, the Republican Dino Rossi refused to concede and asked for a do-over.
If any party here is being hypocritical, then it is the Republicans. If Rossi was serious about his claim that the election was hopelessly flawed and that the Legislature should authorize a new election, then he should have made the claim after the machine recount, not after he was declared the loser in the final count.
This just in, possible fraud in Washington's King County.
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what exactly leads you to believe that the machine recounts are so much more accurate than the process used in the so called "hand recount?"
Well, for starters, all the elections officials said so, including the current and previous Secretary of State and Dan Logan, the King County elections director.
I don't place that much faith in those two people (the current SoS and Dean Logan). Besides, King County is apparently "famous" for doing some "fancy footwork" on the election results database. Google for
King county is famous for it
and see what pops up.
Also, you say "people are much better at reading than machines," but that's only true in the sense that people are more *subjective* than machines: that is, if a line is not drawn or bubble not filled perfectly, a human can pick it up perhaps where a machine cannot. This is true, but it necessarily also means that the same people open themselves up to a host of possible mistakes (both false positives and false negatives). i.e., the truth your statement is based on does not help the idea that hand recounts are more accurate any more than it hurts it.
The 2001 CalTech/MIT study of voting errors -- as measured by residual votes -- showed that hand-counted paper ballots, optically scanned paper ballots, and lever machines were the most accurate voting methods. Punchcards and paperless DREs were significantly less accurate. Counties that switched to DREs from other methods saw an average increase of undervotes of 1% of the votes cast (i.e., from 2% to 3%, as opposed to 2% to 2.02%).
Just trying to lay out the facts.
-jdm