February 05, 2005
Misconduct, Neglect Grounds For Voiding Election
....That's what jumped out at ME in this morning's Seattle Times story. As Stefan notes in his first post today, the transcript will help everyone. But chew on this:
Bridges...denied a Democratic motion to limit any challenge to issues of fraud and illegal votes, saying misconduct or neglect by election officials would also be sufficient grounds for setting aside the election.
Pretty significant, I'd say. Is not the stuffing into the King County tally of 400-plus unverified provisional ballots an example of neglect? Or the discovery of thousands more votes than voters in King County?
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at February 05, 2005
11:13 AM | Email This
1. Failure to reconcile the vote count is also grounds for election board misconduct in my book. Posting "official" vote tallies without certification is another.
2. (1) I think Matt's observation covers a very important point.
(2) Amid the twists and turns of this situation, one thing impresses me, a layperson: Judge Bridges seems to be trying to follow existing law and trying to perform his duties fully and equitably.
(3) There's one thing I haven't understood very well in all of this. My impression is that we have recent but valid laws on the books that require elections officials to take specific and effective measures to prevent and detect fraud, but that these laws were apparently ignored widely. Is this true? If so, does anyone have a good summary of what these laws require, the extent to which they were not followed, and the reasons given, if any, for why they were not followed?
3. Rock on Boonie, I think #3 of your observations is highly important and something I have asked about repeatedly.
4. Swing away Boonie.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse for you, for me, for election officials, and for GreGore.
If this election isn't thrown out, we need to exercise peaceful resistence.
We can hit them where it hurts; we will stop drinking lattes. No, dumb idea. That will hurt me.
What shall we do?
5. start a letter writing campaign to newspapers, radios, TV shows and keep the HEAT on regarding everything the legislature & governor does or doesn't do!
6. Boonie:
I'm pretty sure the measures you referred to were in the form of instructions sent down by Secy Reed last summer. I'm not from WA, but I'm pretty sure I've read that on these threads somewhere.
MATT:
I read the Times article hours ago when I woke up. I don't think it had that wording earlier this morning. The update stamp says 12:00am. I assume that's noon.
I think it's been changed. Does anyone by any chance have the version that was online early this morning?
7. The Boston Tea Party was over a 2% tax increase I think this is worse don't you? why aren't we having a little tea party in Elliot Bay?
8. How about "enhancing ballots" in a manner that runs contrary to RCWs?
9. Election board sloppiness seems more than 'ignorance of the law'. Sam Reed's election WACs (WSR 04-18-028, EMERGENCY RULES, SECRETARY OF STATE, Filed August 24, 2004, 2:33 p.m. , effective August 24, 2004) were issued as emergency rules to have them in place before the September primaries. It is inconceiveable that the County Auditors didn't get a transmittal notice from Reed explaining the urgency of them.
Somehow, the election boards (PARTICULARLY in King County) got the message from the old-boy network that those WACs weren't intended for enforcement. They probably counted on the muddled process to appear too complex to analyze in detail. Unfortunately for them, there's a group of folks outside that network who have more than enough interest, available time and resources to do the analyses that exposed the massive violations of those WACs.
How lovely that Judge Bridges' decisions do allow the discovery process to proceed. Let Dean Logan sweat all those glib explanations he gave the press about vote/voter mismatches being no big deal. Answers, gentlemen, we want answers.
10. "The Boston Tea Party was over a 2% tax increase I think this is worse don't you? why aren't we having a little tea party in Elliot Bay?"
Because PETA would manage to get us all charged with felonies.
11. Damn these liberal niche interest groups, I want to show the same disregard that Olympia shows me.
12. If you have a tea party, make you use ORANGE Pekoe.
I. Sensitive:
I just read the WACs for the first time. Sounds to me like they alone are grounds for throwing out the election---especially the handling of provisional ballots and the precinct reconcilliation procedures.
13. I believe that each precinct is supposed to reconcile their ballots/voters before their ballot box etc is turned over to the County. That was not done in many cases. Had that been done it would have been a lot more difficult to "find" new ballots 9 different times.
14. I believe that each precinct is supposed to reconcile their ballots/voters before their ballot box etc is turned over to the County
The weird thing is that this was allegedly done in the first count. But then, mysteriously, the precinct counts changed in both the machine and manual recounts. County election officials acknowledge this happened but can't explain why it happened.
Oddly enough!
15. Perhaps because it really didn't happen at all??
Or, because they really weren't reconciled at the precincts. It has to be one or the other doesn't it?
16. This just in: while counting the ballots in Baghdad this week, they found another 412 votes for Christine Gregoire.
17. I doubt if the ballots were reconciled after the initial vote count. Is there any evidence to suggest that ? Willful negligance AKA distributed voter fraud prevailed throughout this election as it had in others.
I'd be willing to bet that ballots were not totally reconciled in the 1996 and 2000 general elections, but the motivation did not exist to go back and verify then.
18. Dan - HA HA HA HA .... I got a good laugh out of that one!!
19. I read this morning in the Oak Harbor paper that Island county had 14 more votes than people who cast votes.and they tried to match them up but gave up. so we have 14 more in island county.
20. Matt-
"Home-Run"!! Such a simple post...but so dead spot-on.
Stefan--
Har-Har-Har!! Many of those KingCo Precindts NEVER reconciled at the polls. It would be interesting to note how many of those KingCo Precindt pollbooks were ALTERED after the pollworkers signed off???
Remember, pollworkers must reconcile and sign off?
Looking at those pollbooks is going to be critical. If they were altered in anyway, WHO altered them??? Pollworkers ought to be asked if those reconciliations were exactly what they had recorded huh??
21. And if the pollbooks were altered AFTER the pollworker signed off, what does that mean to the validity of votes in that Precindt??
Just asking--
22. Republican attorneys aren't saying much about Friday's rulings...I'm sure most of what has happened so far is not new to them. I believe their case, i.e. the Rossi case, is solid, so am not too concerned. All that has been said above this posting, and has been said prior to the beginning of the proceedings, indicates to me that the Democrats have the most to be worried about..I plan to just sit back and see how if all plays out.
Don C.
23. Just a word about reconciliation. If you have 1,000 signatures in your poll book and 1,001 ballots cast, there is NO WAY to reconcile them because you don't know whose signature you're missing. You can't "require" poll workers to reconcile.
24. The Evergreen Freedom Foundation seems to have nailed the situation pretty well in their Recommendations to the Legislature, updated Januray 25, 2005:
http://www.effwa.org/Recommendations_2004Election.PDF
I would suggest that any person interested in previous and future Washington elections read this. It gives a good perspective of the apparent 2004 violations of existing law, as well as thoughtful recommendations for changes to the law and the process. It gives the impression, to me at least, that the Secretary of State failed to carry out the law, thereby failing to provide local election officials with direction and/or giving them wiggle room. I know that many of the issues, including the role of the SOS, were discussed on this site previously, but I don't remember if the EFF recommendations, as a whole, were.
25. The reconciliation rule allows for the inability to reconcile, but that doesn't mean they don't try. If they don't reconcile, the poll workers have to attest to what they did trying to reconcile. King County hasn't yet produced these reports.
26. North -- agreed. I probably should have said you can't "require" poll workers to balance. Not balancing should be part of their reconciliation report.
27. I may be really ignorant about this, but I just don't see where it is too much to ask that the books balance. If I am working a cash register and I sell X$ worth of merchandise, my register should have exactly that much money in it at the end of the day, plus whatever cash I began with. Anything more or less than this is totally unacceptable.
By the same token, if you hand X # of people a ballot and they sign in on a poll book, you should have X # of ballots in hand at the end of the day.
28. It's not to much to ask to have the books balance Hanna. The state demands it of companies so they can apply the B&O tax on them. The SEC requires it of public companies that are counting billions of dollars.
It's just an excuse. That much is obvious.
29. Going back to Boonie's #3, are there any teeth in those rules? If the officials ignored the rules, is that a crime?
30. There's no doubt that stuffing the ballot box is a crime.
31. If I am working a cash register and I sell X$ worth of merchandise, my register should have exactly that much money in it at the end of the day, plus whatever cash I began with. Anything more or less than this is totally unacceptable.
No argument there. My point is what if you made a mistake giving change to somebody and your cash doesn't balance? It either balances or it doesn't. You could add or subtract cash from the drawer to make it balance but do you want to do that with ballots?
32. I guess my primary problem is I do not understand how at the end of the day you can end up with more ballots than you handed out in the first place, or where a ballot that you did hand out could have gone if it is not accounted for. I have trouble understanding how that can happen with 1 or 2 let alone hundreds and thousands. It just doesn't add up...no pun intended:)
33. Your cash register may not balance if say SPACE ALIENS come when your back is turned and STUFF a handful of twenties into your till!!
Maybe that's what the Dem's will blame it on..."we don't reconcile due to something that is not of this world".
Logan has tried pretty much everything else to explain away his incompetence and negligence.
Besides, who's to know?
Kind of like a Twilight Zone episode, don't you think?
34. Hanna--
Every Poll book has a Reconciliation form in the back.
Every poll is issued X number of ballots.
Poll workers must account for everyone of those ballots....as well as everything that is stuffed in the ballot box
Plus provisionals, absentees etc.
To be off by thousands is unconscienable.
Every ballot needs a voter. Period.
They reconciled 100% in Jefferson County.
18,772 Voters and 18,772 votes.
Donna Eldridge is an experienced Auditor and demands this. If she was OFF, she would be upfront & explain.
Reconciliation is a fundamental step.
How do you certify if you don't reconcile?
Logan & his Dem cronies want you to believe they have such perfect controls at every polling station there is no way any ballots have slipped in. REALLY?
No offense, but did you see some of those poll workers??
I believe there is undoubtedly BALLOTBOX STUFFING and also BALLOTBOX UNSTUFFING--magical ballots appeared and real ballots disappeared.
If KingCo reconciled, I couldn't say that.
If I'm wrong, let them prove it.
They must now tell it to the Judge thank God.
35. Gary and the Samoyeds, here's what I find in the Revised Code of Washington. I'm not a lawyer. I added the bold and italic type. Otherwise, it was cut and paste.
RCW 29A.84.720
Officers -- Violations generally.
Every person charged with the performance of any duty under the provisions of any law of this state relating to elections, including primaries, or the provisions of any charter or ordinance of any city or town of this state relating to elections who willfully neglects or refuses to perform such duty, or who, in the performance of such duty, or in his or her official capacity, knowingly or fraudulently violates any of the provisions of law relating to such duty, is guilty of a class C felony punishable under RCW 9A.20.021 and shall forfeit his or her office.
36. ", knowingly or fraudulently violates any of the provisions of law relating to such duty, is guilty of a class C felony punishable under RCW 9A.20.021 and shall forfeit his or her office."
Well there ya go!
The way they so willingly allowed felons to vote in this election...leads me to believe they weren't that worried about the consquences of not performing their duties.
In another year...heck! Felons will probably be among the *Protected* class in Washington state if the Dems win this contest!
37. I have been to many contortionist preformances and have seen people fit themselves into, what seemed to be, impossible spaces.
The Dumocrats have, so far out done anything I have ever seen.
The best part is, they will have to do even better to keep themselves (and those paid 'assistants') out of jail.
At least they won't give up their 'right to VOTE!'(PUN intended)
As more 'light' is injected into this situation, we can plainly see that Dumocrats, communists, radical fundamintalists are just 'supporting members' of the same club. 'We are the world'!?
38. After Stefan's disclosure of more vore votes than voters in King County, Dean Logan himself issued a statement saying that maybe as many as 1,800 people just wandered into the polls and picked up ballots without signing the register.
Surely that exhibits neglect.
39. Question: Will the question of intent play any role in establishing any misconduct or neglect of elected officials? With all the illegal votes and other malfunctions, whether human or otherwise, a total general election instead of just a guber election sounds feasible but may not be plausible.