King County is hiring ballot counters supplied by the parties, so that all ballots will be counted by a team of three: One Republican appointee, one Democrat appointee and one county employee. The Democrats object to this, apparently believing that its not fair for only two out of three ballot counters to be Democrats.
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A new website: How Gregoire the Grinch stole Christmas!
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The State Supreme Court may or may not issue a ruling on the Democrats' request to change the rules and order a review of all of the rejected ballots. A big problem is that the Democrats are demanding that all of the provisional and improperly marked ballots be "treated the same". Unfortunately, a large number of questioned ballots that were accepted upon review have already been irretrievably commingled with all of the other ballots. So if a future determination of a new process to review ballots were to be put into place, it is now impossible to go back and re-review all of the questionable ballots. The Democrats got everything they wanted in their earlier lawsuits, yet they still lost. Now they want to change the rules again.
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The state Republicans are holding a “Don’t Change the Rules!” rally this evening in Bellevue. Tuesday, Dec. 7 Bellevue Hyatt - Regency Ballroom 900 Bellevue Way NE (park in the Hyatt parking lot) 6:30 PM
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The Seattle Times gives us another lame tepid editorial endorsing the second recount, but only half of the shenanigans. The Times is right to castigate the Democrats for trying to change the rules, but wrong to justify the second recount.
the second statewide hand recount, paid for by Democrats and expected to be completed in about two weeks, is provided by law. No argument there.Yes, it is provided by law, but it is not required by law. Just like lawsuits are provided by law. The question should be which lawful mechanisms are reasonable to pursue? Doesn't the Times understand that by endorsing the inherently less accurate statewide manual recount, that they are themselves only contributing to this bottomless abyss of monkey business and uncertainty?
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The Seattle Seahawks tied the Dallas Cowboys last night, 43 - 39.
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The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's David Horsey says that the independent voters who voted for both Democrats and Republicans this year were too dumb to know what they were doing. A contest for my readers. Fill in the blank: "Being called stupid by the P-I is like being called _______ by a ________".
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 07, 2004 11:45 AM | Email This
I don't remember the P-U having a problem with that before.
Umm, let's see...
...like being called a theif by a c a s i n o?
...like being called a liar by a politician?
...like being called lazy by a TV advertisement?
P.S. What does this mean:
Your comment could not be submitted due to questionable content: cas ino (minus the space, which I had to put in to get it to submit)
Posted by: Skor Grimm on December 7, 2004 12:56 PM...like being called a religious nut by someone chanting to Gaia
…like being called a bad tackler by a Seahawks defensive player.
Posted by: (the other) John Hawkins on December 7, 2004 01:28 PMSam Reed posted his rules before recounting on Nov. 15th. The rules are quite simple. A recount should not be an attempt to introduce more votes such as absentee votes that were late, provisionals that were incorrect, etc. A recount should simply be a re-count of the ballots. This allows for tabulation errors where votes were missed, etc. but puts a lid on new votes coming in as those votes all should have been in by the original counting deadlines. This is an honest recount. The Kleptocrats would most likely not be able to win under this scenario as what they really need are additional ballots for Gregoire.
The Klepts liked these rules before because as long as they could get all the provisional voters with incorrect signatures found, they would have enough to win and so that is what they asked for from Judge Lum and received. But there was one little problem, they still did not get enough votes to win.
So now, after two counts, the Kleptocrats want to change the rules to suit. It was the Klepts who caused this situation in that they whined to Judge Lum to allow them to go find voters with improper signatures, had this not happened the King County process would have been similar to the rest of the state.
Further, only in King County were there a significant number of ballots that did not properly use the two envelope procedure. So the argument to enforce all counties to the same standard, is really just an argument to try and count more ballots from King County.
Also note that in Asotin, Walla Walla, etc. unlike King County they did not have a large number of ballots with missing signatures. If you are counting and a ballot is missing a signature entirely, that's obviously something you would apply a lot more scrutiny to than a ballot with a signature, that might be slightly different than one on file, which you would only know by a close examination of both. And it's not like the Kleptocrats in King County are bringing in handwriting experts to make sure every vote counts.
Posted by: Jeff B on December 7, 2004 01:31 PMcalled mediocre by William Shatner.
called "unfunny" by Al Franken.
called a fraud by Dan "Kenneth" Rather.
called a bad driver by Edward Kennedy.
called wooden by Algore.
called a slut by Madonna Ciccione.
called pretentious by Gordon Sumner.
called an obnoxious jerk by a Yankees fan.
called incomprehensible by Bob Dylan.
called hyperactive by Jim Carrey.
called a terrorist by Yassir Arafat.
called too loud and obnoxious by a heavy metal band.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega on December 7, 2004 03:41 PMHoward Hirsch
Dayton, Nevada
I could understand voting for CG and Bush. I don't know her, but she seems like a fairly moderate Dem (my neighbor worked with her and thinks the world of her).
But I would love to hear from someone their thinking in voting for Murray and Bush. The very thought of that vote split gives me a headache.
Posted by: iconoclast on December 7, 2004 04:38 PM