January 09, 2005
Asleep at the switch
Secretary of State Sam Reed issued a review in Feb. 2003 about King County's handling of the Nov. 2000 election. Here is one finding: [p. 7]
The county is not consistent in their ballot enhancement procedures. The reviewer observed that ballot enhancement, while done in full view of political observers, did not use the procedures outlined in the Washington Administrative Code. Inconsistencies in how this procedure is handled significantly increase the possibility of a successful election contest.
The relevant WAC section is
here.
Secretary Reed has known for year about the potential for illegal ballot enhancements in King County. What was he doing to oversee compliance on ballot enhancements during the recent recounts, when it really mattered?
The large numbers of illegally enhanced ballots is one of the irregularities cited in the Rossi campaign lawsuit to contest the election.
hat tip: Bob Williams of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. This story broke Friday on the John Carlson Show.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 09, 2005
12:49 PM | Email This
1. Just more proof our election was the most accurate in state history.
This puts even more question in my mind over the Slade Maria race.
Could this finally be the end of King County R&E Dept. deciding elections instead of the people!
Lets hope so!
2. When I first heard about the ballot enhancements, I thought, this can't be legal. I'm amazed that county election staff just went merrily ahead and did something that couldn't have seemed right.
What I am really puzzled about is why the GOP was denied by the courts to halt the process. Didn't this go to court? Why was it ruled as okay, if it blantantly violated state statute?
Sorry, but if Chris Vance couldn't get this stopped when it first happened, it proves how ineffective he really is.
3. So, can someone remind Sam Reed why we have a Secretary of State? He has obviously forgotten what his job is...
4. Recall Sam Reed! This guy did not even enforce laws that he wrote. Does anyone know if he has a hidden agenda? (ie maintaining his status as the only Republican holding a statewide office) It seems odd that he did nothing for Rossi. I have heard that he would tell the Rossi campaign one thing and then do something else....Call me cynical but something is going on beneth the surface.
5. Regarding Sam Reed. Why is he acting like a democratic partisen? I understand he says one thing "privately" to the GOP folks that backed him in his election and another thing publicly. Must be some reason for this.
6. how quickly I forget! Rob Mckenna as AG is also a statewide elected Republican, but still does anyone know if Reed has a vendetta or anything with Rossi?
7. Why can't Sam Reed himself be suid? Or King County? A message needs to be sent that the law must be upheld and that people and counties must be held accountable.
8. It's true that Sam Reed has to go but first things first.
1. Get a re-vote in the Governor's race.
2. Hang this fiasco firmly around the necks of Ron Sims and the King County Council going into the coming elections.
It's time to change the landscape in King County.
9. In reading the postings here, it appears that the election in King County is fraudulent in each and every possible way. Every vote should be questioned. It's amazing that in the 20th century, we can have an election system that is 100% ridiculous. How did anyone ever get elected before? You have shown how every vote (yours and mine) probably didn't get counted right, this time, previous times, ever. Amazing. This is obviously the most corrupt, evil nasty county ever. I've read many history books..but your data eclispses even the most corrupt governments in history! We are living in a world-record place....even every third world election is completely clean compared with the absolute inexcusable, monumental, tremendous fraud and mismanagement handling here. We're in a first world county and people all over the world run better elections. How totally embarassing, to the entire US much less the world, to be from teh most evil, corrupt, inept, backwards, lying, nasty election-effort possible. A
10. jim - Relax (or not). King County is not worse than many (if not most) large unban areas as far as its election fraud and incompetence goes. Chicago (for example) has been famous for its vote fraud for a century. Appalling? Yes. But that is big city, one party government in action. Such crap is normal!
11. Jim, but tell us how you really feel...:)
One of the apologists tried to claim that no disenfranchisement had happened. It was just, he said, "overenfranchisement."
Words fail me.
12. Words fail you because there's no adequate response, I guess. It's a perfectly accurate and sensible statement. Rossi claims votes that should not have counted, counted. That's overenfranchisement.
Jim's letting his emotions cloud his judgement. He probably knows as well as anyone that fraud is not a part of the challenge or the allegations.
13. While intentional fraud may not part of the legal challenge, for some of non-legal beagle types if it looks like fraud, smells like fraud, and some people are bending over backwards to tell you that no fraud occurred, we tend to think that fraud might just have happened.
That's from the court room of public opinion, and should not sway the legal decision. We won't have a chance to render our final judgment until we vote again.
14. The enhanced ballots are a clear reason for a contesting of the election. I'm looking forward to what comes to light when testimony begins to be brought forward under oath with deposed witnesses. Beyond that, I'm perplexed why provisional voters would be allowed to stuff their votes into voting machines. I always assumed that ballots were placed in ballot boxes and only later put through voting machines by election workers--with some care to supervise that operation as well. Oh yes, that's when someone reported seeing a ballot being fed and re-fed five times into the vote-counting machine by an election worker. Yes, the testimony is something to look forward to.
Possibly some of the reasons why SOS Sam Reed was willing to certify this election, not to actually "guarantee" it in any sense, but to pass it along to a contested election process was so that some of the irregularities would be brought to light. This is extending him a huge benefit of the doubt, but, suppose, if he was/is unwilling to take action and receive the resulting political heat--I've tried to imagine just what kind of reaction would have come from the leftist press if he had refused to certify the election--by certifying it, knowing that it will be contested, the corrupt practices were destined to come to light without he himself having to "take the heat." Just a hypothesis while seeking to explain the otherwise unexpained behavior or our SOS. Of course he could have just done his job and we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. Humm...so many imponderables. It's going to be fun watching how it all plays out.
15. One further thought on the enigmatic Sam Reed. Someone made mention of the fact that whenever the problems surrounding the up-coming election were mentioned he was observed to chuckle. The man knew what to expect, barring an unmistakably clear margin of victory. Was He secretly savoring the prospect of a close election? Ahh...perhaps we'll never know. What do you think?
16. JG--as long as we agree that it's emotional speculation, and not related to factual information, I've got no problem with such "public opinion."
17. Hi All,
Could anyone remind me how many ballots King County enhanced? If I remember it was thousands, am I wrong? Thanks
Karen
18. torridjoe, the apologist for King Couny, returned & reiterated his claim of "overenfranchisement."
joe, having an illegal vote cancel your legal vote is effectly the same as having your vote sent to the shredder rather than the counting machine. It is most definitely disenfranchisement.
19. torridjoe: "as long as we agree that it's emotional speculation, and not related to factual information, I've got no problem with such "public opinion."
No, I wouldn't completely agree that it's only "emotional speculation."
It may be emotional speculation as in using intuition, it may be intellectual speculation, or be a combination of the two (most likely).
But again, this is not relating to a legal definition of fraud. I'm thinking more like deception, scam, swindle. Not all politicians are charlatans, but what reason have they given us to trust them (especially in King County)?
This election was fraught with problems.
Was it intentional (fraud) or was it simply incompetence? Both? Let each person decide, and vote accordingly in the future.
20. Bostonian--I'm not apologizing for KC. They have a lot of work to do before the next election. I'm granting almost everything I've heard here in terms of ballots that exist or don't, and I think that's a more than fair position to take, since Rossi has produced not a single ballot. That's not particularly important, however--there was no fraud to allege, so continual complaining about the job they did doesn't get Rossi any closer to his revote.
As for your definition of disenfranchisement--how does an illegal vote for Rossi cancel out a legal vote for him? Your bias that all illegal votes must be Gregoire votes, is showing. You get the right to vote, and have it counted. Illegal votes have no bearing on that right. Your vote does not count as a piece of an aggregation; it only counts as a single vote.