Republicans have discovered and verified 737 illegal votes in Washington's ultra-close governor's election, state party leaders said Wednesday
Vance said Wednesday that Republicans determined the number of felons who voted illegally by comparing voting rolls from the secretary of state with a list of convicted felons from the State Patrol, and checking each name to determine whether the person's voting rights had been restored.And the number of illegal votes will only keep getting larger.Vance said the 737 illegal votes broke down like this:
-186 felons in King County
-54 felons from elsewhere in the state
-44 people who died before absentee ballots were mailed
-10 who voted twice in Washington state
-6 who voted in Washington and another state
-437 provisional ballots that were illegally fed directly into voting machines, as reported by King, Pierce and Stevens counties.
PRESS RELEASE
January 25, 2005
Sec. of State refuses to change with the law
OLYMPIA—At today’s public hearing conducted by the office of the Secretary of State (SOS) on changes to Washington’s provisional ballot rules, Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) President Bob Williams testified that the lack of uniform standards in processing provisional ballots has seriously damaged the credibility of Washington’s elections process. According to Williams, this is a problem that is not addressed by the current Washington Administrative Code (WACs) changes currently under consideration.
“Validation rates have varied from 41% to 92% in the counties. Some counties did not verify signatures as required by state law,” said Williams, who oversees EFF’s Voter Integrity Project and its citizen action wing, Grassroots Washington. “On November 24, Secretary Reed said he would use his rule making authority to ensure absentee ballots and provisional ballots are treated the same across the state. These eleven rules changes do not do that!”
Williams called on the SOS to adopt WACs that would require reconciliation between the number of ballots and the number of eligible voters; more security measures at the polls; a color coded system for ballots; and an end to political parties being given access to the names of provisional voters.
Williams also noted that all eleven proposed rules fail to cite the current law (RCW 29A). Many of the changes suggested by EFF are required by law under the 2003 election reform package, yet the SOS apparently views them as optional.
“We’ve been told by the AG’s office that ‘shall’ really doesn’t mean ‘shall,’” said SOS representative Sheryl Moss, who manages the Certification and Training Program in the State Elections Division. Moss permitted “limited testimony” from Mr. Williams, but appeared not to recognize the urgency in making any real changes immediately. “I anticipate there will be proposed legislation on the subject, so we [SOS] will be waiting to see what the legislature enacts,” she said.
Williams disagrees: “With spring elections rapidly approaching and the possibility of a recount still at hand, these changes need to made now!”
Posted by: Boonie on January 26, 2005 09:29 PMTalk about mystery ballots, and you lose them.
Posted by: South County on January 26, 2005 09:33 PMPerhaps we should commend the many felons who didn't vote also, unless their reason for not voting is that they were back in the slammer or not yet on work release.
Posted by: Keith on January 26, 2005 09:44 PMPerhaps we should commend the many felons who didn't vote also, unless their reason for not voting is that they were back in the slammer or not yet on work release.
Posted by: Keith on January 26, 2005 09:44 PMIf you check the pulse of King Co liberal nazi's on the Times opinion page, they believe the best solution is to give felons their voting rights back as soon as they are released.
Posted by: Andy on January 26, 2005 10:03 PMThe fact that we can't KNOW how these folks voted but that we DO know they were not entitled to vote is exactly the point.
I think most people would understand that the number of ballots should equal the number of voters, and that if ballots are just 'found' someplace with no evidence of who cast them they should be regarded with suspicion.
I think most people would have a harder time for faulting an election official who failed to realize that a particular registration address was a mailbox store, than for being unable to say where a bunch of ballots came from. The former could be seen as an innocent mistake; the latter represents an official's failure to do his job.
Posted by: supercat on January 26, 2005 10:44 PMAny of those? As whacky as this election was, surely their must be.
Posted by: DeadManVoting (aka Iguana) on January 26, 2005 11:27 PMOr how about homeless dead double-voting felons who voted provisionally in 7 other states while showing their home address as Paul Berendt's garage?
Posted by: Michele S on January 27, 2005 12:04 AM... while as undocumented, illegal aliens, working as nannies and maids for Gregoire who neglected to declare their wages/taxes!
:-)
I found a Phyllis Sclafly article written last August that shows chilling prescience regarding the mess our state is in.
Here is the link:
http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2004/aug04/04-08-18.html
Read it and weep...
Posted by: ERNurse on January 27, 2005 12:38 AMRE-VOTE!!
Posted by: Arky on January 27, 2005 05:23 AMEvery dead persons ballot envelope should be dusted for fingerprints and compared to the fingerprints of relatives. If a match is found, charges should be pressed.
(Feigned) ignorance of the law is no defense.
Posted by: Scott in Carnation on January 27, 2005 05:30 AMOnce he's elected, what do you bet the meme becomes, "Why can't the rest of the Republican party emulate moderates like Dino Rossi?"
Which is exactly what happened with Ahnuld.
Posted by: Matt J Kurlander on January 27, 2005 08:04 AMSOURCE: http://www.conservativeaction.org/resources.php3?nameid=votefraud
How Democrats Steal Elections - Top 10 Methods of Liberal Vote Fraud
1. Over-Voting. In Democrat strongholds like St. Louis, Philadelphia and Detroit, some precincts had 100% of their registered voters voting, with 99% of the ballots going to Gore. Clearly, multiple voting resulted in extra tallies for Gore in the 2000 election. (New York Post, 12/09/00).
2. Dead Voters. This classic Democratic method of vote fraud goes all the way back to 1960 in Chicago and Dallas. The 2000 election was no exception. In Miami-Dade County, for example, some of the 144 ineligible votes (those which officials actually admitted to) were cast by dead people, including a Haitian-American who's been deceased since 1977 (Miami-Herald, 12/24/00).
3. Mystery Voters. These "voters" cast votes anyway but are not even registered to vote. In heavily Democratic Broward County, for example, more than 400 ballots were cast by non-registered voters. (Miami-Herald 1/09/01)
4. Military ballots. Many of these votes were disqualified for the most mundane and trivial reasons. At least 1,527 valid military ballots were discarded in Florida by Democratic vote counters (Drudge Report, 11/19/00).
5. Criminals. Felons are a natural Democratic voter and they're protected on voter rolls across the country. In Florida at least 445 ex-convicts - including rapists and murderers -- voted illegally on November 7th. Nearly all of them were registered Democrats. (Miami-Herald 12/01/00)
6. Illegal aliens. These voters have long been a core liberal constituency, especially in California. In Orange County in 1996, Rep. Bob Dornan had his congressional seat stolen from him when thousands of illegal aliens voted for Loretta Sanchez (Christian Science Monitor, 9/2/97).
7. Vote-buying. Purchasing votes has long been a traditional scheme by Democrats, and not just with money. In the 2000 election in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Democratic workers initiate a "smokes-for-votes" campaign in which they paid dozens of homeless men with cigarettes if they cast ballots for Al Gore (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 11/14/00).
8. Phantom Voters. These voters don't really exist, but their ballots do. In the 1996 Lousiana Senate race, GOP candidate Woody Jenkins had the election stolen from him when he discovered that 7,454 actual votes were cast but had no paper trail to authenticate them (Behind the Headlines, F.R. Duplantier, 4/27/97).
9. Dimpled chads. Those infamous punch-cards were a ballot bonanza for Al Gore. Democratic poll workers in Palm Beach, Dade and Broward counties tampered and manipulated thousands of ineligible ballots and counted them for Gore, even though no clear vote could be discerned. (NewsMax.com 11/27, 12/22, 11/18, 11/19/00).
10. Absentee ballots. Normally it's assumed that Republicans benefit from absentee ballots. But in the case of Miami's 1997 mayoral election, hundreds of absentee ballots were made for sale or sent out to non-Miami residents. Fraud was so extensive in the race that the final results were overturned in court (FL Dept. of Law Enforcement Report, 1/5/98)."
Keep up the emails and letters to newspapers, legislators, auditors, Sam Weed and illegitimate governor!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Norm on January 27, 2005 08:43 AMI wonder where the dems picked up this idea that "it doesn't matter if these people voted illegally, it only matters if this would have affected hte outcome of the election." I have been hearing this litany on talk radio over and over.Any port in a storm. Posted by: Boonie on January 27, 2005 08:56 AM
Keep up the good work.
Ron in Virginia
Posted by: Ron on January 27, 2005 09:58 AMRalph R wrote:
"I saw this posted in Free Republic the other day and it is so true & applicable to the election fraud perpetuated by KC and the WA DemonRATS in this election.
Now, if I were to post a lot of quotes, so old as to be unverifiable, they would be suspect, but then, I'm one of those evil "DemonRATS."
Of course, there are more recent cases, documented and verified.
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2421595&nav=168XRvNe - Voter registrations destroyed by the company paid to collect them. Oh, wait. Those were "DemonRAT" registrations, and the company was paid by the virtous Republicans, so it's ok.
Or, how about the 10,000 Navy absentee ballots the DemonRATs tried to get Florida to toss? Oh, wait. That never happend, (so I can't even publish a link) and Navy Postal Clerks routinely postmark all outgoing mail. (They also handle classified material, are required to have at least a "Secret" clearance and are very good at their jobs.)
Ok, how about the folks that went onto the Indian Reservation and came out with affadavits showing voter fraud in California? Oh, wait. It turned out that the affadavits were faked. http://www.dailykos.net/archives/000705.html Well, never mind, then. It was just an attempt to "rebalance the scale" from all those evil "DemonRATs."
Ok, well how about the people that stopped voter registration on the reservation in New Mexico?, saying that voter registration cannot be done on Federal land (?) Oh, wait. Those folks tend to vote "DemonRAT," so we shouldn't let them register. http://www.naacp.org/news/2004/2004-11-01.doc
(I've got lots more, but you get the point.)
Ok, rant over. Both parties, mine included, have individuals that are willing to do anything to win. The ends do not justify the means, and my party is certainly no less guilty than the Republicans. While this "pot" may be calling the Republican "kettle" black, it is with the full knowledge that we need to clean up our own act.
Incumbents (of both parties) tend to be against meaningful election reform. Let's face it, if you're in office, you probably don't want to find out that you got there by some underhanded dealing.
But nothing is served by calling the other side names and assuming that they caused all the problems while your own side it totally virtuous. I occasionally deal with "rabid" Democrats that insist on referring to the other party as "Repugnicans" (and worse).
We have some real differences about issues. This is good, as neither side has a lock on the entire truth. When we can sit down together to discuss them, the public is well served. We can often find ways to address the concerns of both sides.
But if you insist on demonizing the "other side" you lose that perspective and the opportunity to make your points known to them.
Posted by: John Barelli on January 27, 2005 11:29 AMThe Sun (of Bremerton, WA) January 27, 2005, page A1:
Felon Voting Charge Diluted
A Sun examination of the group's [the “group” is BIAW] list found that, out of the 11 alleged illegal felons voting:
• Two had their voting rights restored.
• Four didn't vote.
• One had his voting rights stripped after the election.
• Two voted, but it could not be confirmed whether their voting rights had been restored or whether they voted illegally.
• Two voted illegally.
The lobbying group, the Building Industry Association of Washington, said its numbers in Kitsap were skewed because it received a list of the county's registered voters rather than those who actually voted in November, said Tom McCabe, executive vice president of the BIAW.
Kitsap County election officials maintained this week that the BIAW list was not accurate.
"Kitsap County was right, and we were wrong," McCabe said. "We assumed it was the same list in Kitsap that all the other counties sent us."
Note to BIAW: Never assume -- you'll make an ass out of you and me. (Well, maybe not me; but definitely you.)
The Kitsap Co. Auditor is a Democrat. Twice now the list provided by the Kitsap Co. Auditor has been less than what was apparently requested -- once when the question was reconciling ballots to voters credited with voting and now when the question was finding felons among the voters who voted.
First, the Kitsap list was obtained by the GOP too early, according to the auditor, for the list to contain all the voters who voted. The few hundred "mystery ballots" became 18 when the list of voters credited with voting was reconciled -- or at least, as close as Kitsap could get to reconciling the numbers.
Now, somehow the BIAW thought it was getting a list of the voters who voted, but got a list containing lots of registered voters who didn't vote.
Check twice and avoid having to scrape egg off your face. Don't assume that Kitsap's auditor will give you what you thought you plainly requested. Stop giving the auditor the opportunity to say: "It's frustrating for us not to know what information they're working with, and not to come to us and check out if that the information is correct."
Posted by: Micajah on January 27, 2005 12:02 PMYour brethren in Kentucky stand with you!!!
Posted by: Jeff H on January 27, 2005 12:44 PM"Now, now, John Barelli, you'll spoil the fun if you take away the playground name-calling behavior. ;-)"
I know. My son keeps telling me that I'm no fun.
Once in a while, though, I can actually get through to someone that we need to find ways to work together to actually solve the problems, rather than just blaming the "other side," and that neither side can really claim innocence in this.
Democrats are at least as bad in this regard as Republicans. We've got some folks that have minds that are so closed, if you look in their ear you'll see an "out of business" sign.
If only the Libertarians would start fielding candidates that were serious. This last election, Ms. Bennett publicly stated that they were only hoping to draw votes away from the Democrats. I'm not sure I'd vote for them, but it would make for an interesting race. Perhaps we would actually end up deciding it on the issues (gasp!)
In my district, one of the two Libertarian legislature candidates didn't even bother to show up for the only debate. The other one apparently had not bothered to find out what his own positions were on any of the issues.
Posted by: John Barelli on January 27, 2005 01:03 PM....BUT we're concerned right now with what is happening in WA.
I do agree with you that election fraud needs to stop asap wherever it occurs!
Posted by: Ralph R on January 27, 2005 02:54 PMI think I can explain that.
RCW 29A.68.110 provides that - No election may be set aside on account of illegal votes, unless it appears that an amount of illegal votes has been given to the person whose right is being contested, that, if taken from that person, would reduce the number of the person's legal votes below the number of votes given to some other person for the same office, after deducting therefrom the illegal votes that may be shown to have been given to the other person.
There are two key terms that need to be clarified in the legal process that is underway (whether that process is in the courts or the legislature)
1) What does the term “appears” means in the phrase “unless it appears that an amount of illegal votes has been given to the person whose right is being contested”
It could mean that you merely have to find more illegal votes that the margin of victory, but the decorates position is that you have to look at the next phrase, “that, if taken from that person” to understand that the law requires that you must actually do the subtraction, and that it isn’t reasonable to assume that all the illegal votes would be subtracted just from the winner/leader.
2) Then there is the definition “illegal votes”. RCW 29A.68.020(b) provides that Illegal votes do not include votes cast by improperly registered voters who were not properly challenged under RCW 29A.08.810 and 29A.08.820.
RCW 29A.08.810 provides that challenges initiated by a registered voter must be filed not later than the day before any primary or election, general or special, at the office of the appropriate county auditor. RCW 29A.08.020 provides that all challenged ballots must be determined no later than the time of canvassing for the particular primary or election. The decision of the canvassing board or other authority charged by law with canvassing the returns shall be final.
The Democrats position is that these provision require that you look through the voting roles in advance, find the dead persons, find the felons, etc and when that vote is being cast or counted raise you raise your objection. If your objection is ignored, then you note that ballot/vote as one you will raise in your contest – because then you would know exactly which ballots/vote you were objecting to as illegal.
In regards to the Wisconsin situation, I'm watching it with interest. There's a good story on it at http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/politics/10751605.htm
If the facts come out as you (and some other Republicans) state, I'll be all in favor of heating up the tar and plucking the chickens. Probably even more than most Republicans, because along with cheating, they will have brought discredit upon my party.
Republicans will certainly continue to believe that Democrat cheating is worse that Republican cheating. Democrats will continue to believe the opposite. We can "agree to disagree" on that topic. After all, While I may believe that your "pot" is blacker than my "kettle", I do not believe that my party is free of dirt, and what I really want is for us to have clean elections.
Hopefully, we can agree that:
1. Most of the people on both sides are honest people of good will. Both sides want to win, but neither the average Democrat, nor the average Republican wants to win by cheating.
2. Both sides have individuals that do believe that "the ends justify the means" and are willing to cheat to win.
3. Incumbents will be reluctant to closely examine the system. Let's face it. When you're eating the sausage, you don't want to tour the sausage factory. Change will only come when we (on both sides) get together and insist on it. That won't happen until we realize that the "other side" is not evil, it just has a different perspective, and most of the time, our agreements far outweigh our disagreements.
The "silver lining" to this whole mess is that it gives us the opportunity to insist on change. The courts will quite likely order a special election to clean this up. The system has been put under a spotlight, and the warts are visible for all the world to see.
Posted by: John Barelli on January 27, 2005 05:10 PMWould you make a point I could disagree on? It hasn't happened since SF-186...and frankly it is embarrassing. Maybe it isn't to you, but I refuse to hold your hand and sing 'Kumbaya', okay?
Heedless,
If you want to play, keep to the topic...
Posted by: smegma on January 27, 2005 06:38 PMYou are right, we agree to disagree! I am convinced that MANY more (not all but many more) Democrat voters and Democrat officials at the local precinct, county, state and federal levels tend to condone, commit and excuse fraud & violence in far more disproportionate numbers than their Republican counterparts. And the amazing thing is that these occurences of fraud & violence, ballot stuffing, mystery voters, dead voters, felons, out-of-state voters, and charges of disenfranshisement seem to occur in nearly all instances that I recall in Democrat-controlled precincts and counties. Based on your previous posts and comments, I know this is not part of your behavior or beliefs... but believe me John, you are one of a vanishing breed in the Democratic Party. Your party is being increasingly being taken over by the violent activists within MoveOn.org, America Coming Together, George Soros, Steve Bing, Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, etc., who fund, condone & accept fraud and violence to achieve their ends. Even John Kerry attempted to incite Afro-Americans to violence by proclaiming in numerous campaign appearences (like at predominantly Afro-American Baptist churches) that George Bush and the Repubs disenfranchised 1 million voters in 2000 with absolutely no basis or proof at all for this number. And just prior to the Nov 2 election, Elizabeth Edwards promised in PA that violence and riots would not occur as long as the Democrats won... Again amazing, from the wife of the Democrat VP candidate to advocate or excuse violence if her party & candidates don't win.
You are far too balanced and reasonable to belong to a party like the Democrats for too much longer!
I agree with your points that real change will come about only when concerned citizens rise up and insist on legitimate reforms brought about most likely through ballot initiatives since the politicians are too engrained in their own corrupt, special-interest groups to bring about real change.
Posted by: Ralph R on January 27, 2005 06:42 PMWow! Your second paragraph was loaded...
I contend that there have been such on both sides, as John Barelli ilustrated (I have to kick myself to remind me John is a Democrat).
Now that we know our respective parties have such a shady background, let us do something to construct real election reforms.
John, you running for SoS?
Posted by: smegma on January 27, 2005 07:07 PM