The Big Binder is not getting good press in today's Big Media.
Today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer debunked its earlier article on the discrepancy between ballots and voters in King County. P-I, Feb. 18:
the number of ballots cast at each precinct and the number of people who voted at each precinct. ... are supposed to be matched up before the final results are certified 15 days after the election. Logan said that's the necessary check on election accuracy.Today's P-I -- "More jumbled election numbers"
Review of King County records in governor race resolves littleMeanwhile, Keith Ervin of the Seattle Times drops the hammer today on all those unverified provisional ballots -- "Records raise new questions about 40 voters". The headline is an understatement:A close accounting of King County polling-place records failed to resolve hundreds of discrepancies between the number of ballots cast and the number of voters who signed up to vote Nov. 2, elections officials acknowledged yesterday.
The 40 voters in question are among 348 known to have improperly put provisional ballots into counting machines.I'll have more about the unverified provisionals later. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 12, 2005 09:52 AM | Email ThisNinety-two of the 348 voters were deemed ineligible to vote because they weren't registered, they were credited with casting other votes or they had signature problems.
But documents released yesterday also show that the number of provisional ballots believed to have gone through polling-place tabulators is considerably higher than the 348 documented cases.
I hope you can figure out these ballot discrepancy numbers better in the coming days, after you have more of an opportunity to review the material released by King County.
For example, one part of the Times article says "some polling places had 216 more ballots than voters who signed poll books, while others tallied 159 more voters than votes".
But then it says "At the Bothell Regional Library, 31 provisional ballots apparently went through counters but couldn't be definitively matched with specific voters. Thirty provisional ballots were mishandled at Denny Terrace in Seattle."
This would imply that 61 out of the 216 excess ballots happened at just two of the precincts out of around 2600 precincts in King County (or perhaps two polling locations out of around 800 in King County).
But then the Times says "The election staff made 660 "adjustments" for mishandled provisional ballots and other identified errors."
Obviously 660 is a lot larger than 216. Perhaps it would be 216 plus 660 equals 876 excess ballots? That would be more logical, when some precincts (or polling locations) have as many as 30 or 31 excess ballots.
The Times reporter had an excellent story on how 40 out of the 348 identified provisional ballot stuffers apparently voted more than once -- i.e. being credited with casting a proper poll or absentee ballot, and then going to some precinct and stuffing a provisional ballot.
Do you have a list of the 40 double voters? You could do the following: (1) get a copy of their provisional ballot envelope (2) information about the precinct where they stuffed the provisional ballot (3) information about the precinct where they credited with their normal vote (4) if normal vote was poll, a copy of the precinct book page where they signed, and (5) if normal vote was absentee, a copy of their absentee ballot envelope that they signed.
This should be a lot easier to do with the recently released information from King County.
Keep in mind that provisional ballot stuffers can be identified only if they return their signed ballot envelope to election workers after stuffing the provisional ballot directly into the machine. If they simply stuff their ballot, keep their envelope, and walk out -- then the precinct statistics will show a stuffed provisional ballot without any clue as to who cast the ballot.
Wonder if Move On bussed about 30 people around to different busy precincts to stuff provisional ballots on election day?
Posted by: Richard Pope on March 12, 2005 10:05 AMOrlando Mayor indicted and suspended in election case
Special election will be held to replace him
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/orl-asec-dyerstory031105,0,7150.story?coll=sfla-news-florida
Posted by: Boonie on March 12, 2005 10:09 AM*****"But the judge in the case, John Bridges, has rejected that argument in pretrial hearings. Citing state law and previous court cases, Bridges has said the GOP needs to show that Gregoire apparently received enough improper votes to make the difference in the election. ****
Posted by: Andy on March 12, 2005 10:31 AMBecause the shocker seems like it's going to come when you reach the end of your own 'recanvas' and sum up the erroneous provisionals - it _seems_ like it's going to be a lot higher than 348. (You've reported 60 already that weren't part of the 348 already.)
Heck, I'd like to just get each and every sheet converted into text and broadcast - so everyone can try to make sense of the insanity.
I think I've had enough of the scratched out numbers too. Single-strike + initialed for a writing error, and put more physical places on the darn report for two full recounts.
Posted by: Al on March 12, 2005 11:12 AMAnd for this you think it was a disastrously flawed election? Seems to me, given results in other states where they are talking about 1-3% error rates (that would be 30 to 90 THOUSAND questionable ballots!), that Washington had one of the cleanest, most error-free elections in the country.
Like the rational people have been saying all along -- Christine Gregoire is indeed the duly elected governor for the next 4 years and anyone trying to claim otherwise is both a sore loser and is on a Quixotic mission of tilting at windmills.
But go ahead, GOP. Spend your political capital in the state on this fool's mission and tell the independent voters that you have no regard for democracy and the will of the people.
Those of us who are Democrats truly urge you to continue on this fool's errand, because it will assure us victory after victory in future elections.
Posted by: Nelson on March 12, 2005 11:49 AMAm I wrong here, but I do believe that mistakes are factored into elections to begin with, which is why reconcealation is supposed to happen before certification (to fix those "mistakes")?
Some people may call them "unverified provisional ballots", but I think their proper term needs to be applied here... its called "Ballot Stuffing".
"But go ahead, GOP. Spend your political capital in the state on this fool's mission and tell the independent voters that you have no regard for democracy and the will of the people. "
Could it be that the Dem's are nervous in regards to the big $750,000 + "refund"??? Dont you need a court decision for this????
In respect to the Independant voters of this state, read the "talk back" section of the Tribunes issue today. Read beyond the subject of Absentee Voting, and you will see how much the Voters of this state view the integrity of the Election of 2004.
Posted by: Chris on March 12, 2005 12:20 PMIt's trolls like you that fortify my belief that the GOP is winning. You have Governor Fraudoire, enjoy her for now, because Rossi will blow out her a$$ in 2008 by so much, no matter how many felons and dead people you throw at us, you can't win!
Posted by: Manco_Dollars on March 12, 2005 12:30 PMUp before noon! I'm impressed! Did your mom kick you out of the rec room so she could vacuum?
Posted by: Uncl Wilty on March 12, 2005 01:00 PMThis is an excuse used to cover up the truth that most of these problems could have been avoided by changing the color of provisionals or coding the timing marks different to prevent them from going through the acu vote. This was an issue raised months before the election, and they failed to do anything about it.
When does the mantra change from "a very human process" to "we apologize, we were negligent in our approach to provisional ballots"
I won't hold my breath.
You won't hear any apologies from KC because negligence is legal cause for an election contest.
It certainly appears to me that negligence led to at least several hundred provisional ballots being improperly "stuffed" into the accuvote machines.
Below is a cut and paste from a response I received on October 21, 2004 from Bill Huennekens, KC Superintendent of Elections, in respinse to an email I sent to his office on October 17, 2004.
DW: The first question I wish to ask your office is what efforts is King County taking to ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots?
BH: Only individuals who have completed a registration can have a ballot be cast and counted
DW: Does the County plan to make any effort to ensure that the voters who turn up at the polls or who submit absentee ballots are in fact the people who registered?
BH: Yes, the signature on every single absentee ballot is checked against the signature on the voter's original registration form
DW: I would also like your office to tell me what it indends to do with "Provisional Ballots" cast by people who claim to be registered. Will these be checked against voters lists before being counted?
BH: Yes.
If only people who are registered can cast and have their ballot counted how in the world did all those provisional ballots get counted before they were checked.
I rather naively assumed last October that Mr. Huennekens actually had some sort of procedure in place to accomplish what he claimed to be doing to ensure the integrity of the election.
I thank Stefan for his hard work and hope (still rather naively I suppose) that Judge Bridges will soon overturn this mess.
Posted by: DeadWood on March 12, 2005 02:25 PMMore seriously, is there something to the Times' claim that the 1,853 figure is out the window? After following this business since election day, it still seems to me that the election was stolen, but it would be nice to be able to back it up with numbers.
Stefan, any chance of a spreadsheet with running totals on the various bogus votes? (Felons, unverified provisionals, voterless ballots, etc.) It would also be nice to see the net difference each contribution "probably" made based on the candidates' percentages in the relevant districts. Finally, it would be interesting to see which of these numbers have been recognized by both sides - it sounds like the 40 belong in this category, at the very least.
On the other hand, we shouldn't forget all of the questionable tactics the D's used during the various recounts - it would be a good reminder to also show the number of ballots that were added by "enhancements", after-the-fact phone calls, etc., and their "probable differences".
This "probable" stuff does seem rather bogus to me. I'd guess that monkey business disproportionately benefits whichever party is locally in control of the election process, and King County seems to have had a very disproportionate amount of monkey business. Still, if this ridiculous burden of "proving" that the Gregoire votes on these (secret) ballots exceeded a certain percentage is really going to fall on the R's, it's about the best approach one can use.
(Doing best Nelson impression:) So, this all comes down to... [pauses to look for some small number in a post] ...FIVE ballots, out of three million?
Victory after victory on the McNeil Isl. Ward B laundry detail election, you mean?
Posted by: llevrok on March 12, 2005 05:29 PMVictory after victory on the McNeil Isl. Ward B laundry detail election, you mean?
Posted by: llevrok on March 12, 2005 05:29 PMIn addition to these 348 “honest” provisional ballot stuffers, there are an unknown number of “dishonest” provisional ballot stuffers who cannot be identified. These people stuffed their completed ballot into the AccuVote machine, and failed to return the provisional ballot envelope. If you are a smart ballot stuffer, you will do this to eliminate any evidence that will point to you.
There could be anywhere from a few hundred to over a thousand of these unidentifiable provisional ballot stuffers. Somehow, I think that all of the 16 provisional ballot stuffers in BOT 01-1723 fall into this category.
To the extent that provisional ballot stuffing is “honest", voters would return the empty completed provisional envelope to the poll worker. “Honest” stuffing should be fairly evenly distributed among the various precincts.
But if provisional ballot stuffing is “dishonest", then the empty completed provisional envelope is not returned, so that no paper trial is left to identify the fraudulent voter. In addition, “dishonest” stuffing is likely to be concentrated in a small number of precincts (probably busy ones, where confusion is otherwise rampant), instead of being more evenly spread around the county.
KC Elections says that a bit over 31,000 provisional ballots were issued. There are 348 identified “honest” stuffers, which is an “honest” stuffing rate of just over 1%. As for “dishonest” stuffers, 310 would be 1% and 1240 would be 4% rate of “dishonest” stuffing. So the total stuffing rate for provisional ballots would range anywhere from just over 1% (assuming no “dishonest” stuffing at all) to as much as 5% or more (assuming at least 1240 “dishonest” stuffers).
Obviously, something is really wrong when you have a precinct like BOT 01-3271, where 16 out of 25 provisional ballots that are issued end up getting stuffed – this is a stuffing rate of 64%. When the stuffing rate countywide is somewhere between 1% and 5%, having a 64% stuffing rate in a single precinct strongly suggests an organized effort at dishonesty.
All of this supports the proposition that the Democrats could have driven vanloads of fraudulent voters around to multiple precincts, especially the busy ones, and certainly including a number which were Republican leaning, in order to stuff provisional ballots for their candidates.
Posted by: Richard Pope on March 12, 2005 07:58 PMTurns out that the liberals in this state have as their highest impact election reform as being bumping up the primary date. You heard it in the 3.14 first, folks. Don't worry about the fraud, the malfeasance, or the corruption. All of it can be solved by making the primary earlier. And the Republicans won't go along with it.
Secondarily, it turns out the Republicans are refusing to go along until an amendment requiring a citizenship check for registration to vote is conducted. Seems that the evil Republicans are being obstructionist and unreasonable by requesting that voting be limited to citizens. The 'Nelson Liberals,' being enlightened, are apparently sure that it's unconstitutional to put measures into place that ensure that the right to vote is restricted to citizens only.
I can't make this up, folks. (Of course, buried in the story is the small fact that the Ds can't even get a simple majority in place, much less than the 2/3 required. Ruins the Evil Republican angle.)
Enjoy,
Steve
Posted by: Patches Pal on March 12, 2005 08:31 PM31,000 issued.
x used properly. (Includes both verified & credited and failed to verify)
y "stuffed honestly"
z "stuffed without returning envelope"
q "Voter walked off or spoiled ballot"
31,000 should equal x + y + z + q
q should be near the average spoilage rate.
x is determinable.
y is determinable.
This should give an upper bounds on z.... which seems likely to be unacceptably high.
Posted by: Al on March 12, 2005 09:29 PM"348 provisional ballot voters put the ballot directly into the AccuVote machine, but returned the completed provisional ballot envelope to the poll workers."
What is your source for this? Perhaps I missed something.
I do know that many provisional ballot envelopes were returned empty. In many cases, there were notes on the envelopes that said that the provisional ballot had been mistakenly fed through the AccuVote machine.
Also, recall that the invalidity rate of the 348 ballots was about triple the invalidity rate of the entire batch of provisional ballots.
Posted by: Tim B. on March 12, 2005 09:46 PMDo you know whether King County followed the rule which required voters to sign the poll book before they were issued a provisional ballot?
Posted by: Micajah on March 12, 2005 10:07 PMDoesn't the law say that provisional ballots must be verified before being counted?
If so, then aren't all 348 of the 348 "honest" unverified provisional ballots (that were fed into the AccuVote prior to being verified) invalid?
Isn't this talk of 252 of them subsequently being verified therefore irrelevant?
Posted by: ewaggin on March 12, 2005 10:35 PMI think the idea behind the explanation that some of those 348 were inserted by eligible voters is to show that not all of them would have been rejected if they had been checked as required by law before being included in the vote count.
Imagine what would be a perfect situation for the Dems: Every single one of the improperly inserted provisional ballots could be shown to have been issued to and cast by voters who were eligible and registered to vote those ballots.
If that were the case, you would have reason to holler at the precinct officers for letting a situation develop which could have destroyed the integrity of the election; but you would have to admit that they got lucky and avoided a disaster.
Of course, that's not the case, but the Dems want to reduce the number of illegitimate ballots in the vote count as much as they can by tracing some of those ballots to eligible, registered voters.
Posted by: Micajah on March 12, 2005 10:58 PMThe question is how does outside illegal & fraudulent activity become incorporated in the Election contest ? As it is beginning to appear, how could so many election workers fallen prey to the illegalities in voting perpetrated here ? Negligance - perhaps willful negligance in some precincts is one explanation. Sloppiness in a number of counties - especially King not reconciling voter vs. vote numbers and finally a SoS that certified the election too soon. Sophisticated Distributed Vote Fraud that has been around for many years ? but not uncovered as a factor until now
Sound Politics reports; you decide...
Does the AccuVote systems keep track of voting quantities by time; 6 people Hour 1, 25 people Hour 9, etc? If so we can perform some of what Mark Beyer suggests, and look at the timing of a whole lot of votes. If there is a pattern of going from precinct to another in a certain timeframe, this may then demonstrate a pattern of cluster voting by MoveOn.Org types?
Just a thought.
Pudster
Posted by: Puddybud on March 12, 2005 11:42 PMAs far as I know, provisional voters were not supposed to receive provisional ballots unless they first signed on one of the lines on a back page (in the poll book) specifically for provisional voters.
Posted by: Tim B. on March 13, 2005 02:22 AMIn a stunning about-face, the New York Times reported Sunday that when the U.S. attacked Iraq in March 2003, Saddam Hussein possessed "stockpiles of monitored chemicals and materials," as well as sophisticated equipment to manufacture nuclear and biological weapons, which was removed to "a neighboring state" before the U.S. could secure the weapons sites.
When is it??????
Once mixed in, the "stuffed" PV's are indistinguishible from valid ballots.
Posted by: DeadWOod on March 13, 2005 12:17 PMMy guess is YES, they thought they could get away with it..... it's probably been going on for years...
Can you say busted?
Posted by: sgmmac on March 13, 2005 12:59 PMIf MoveOn and Kerry had not forced the issue with the hand recount, it is likely that many of the irregularities of this election would have gone un-noticed. For that I sincerely thank them.
It was clear to many before the election (and to Hunnekens on election day) that something fishy was going on with the PV's. 31,000 PV's is quite anomalous for Washington.
As you may be aware, MoveOn and other left-leaning organizations were working very hard in the weeks and months before the election to get their followers to use PV's.
While I don't know whether folks officially tied to MoveOn promoted illegal voting through the use of PV's, I am prety sure some of their followers did so.
Like most people in King CO, I work in a predominantly left leaning workplace. As a moderate and centerist with no ties to either major party I am actually looked upon by my collegues as a conservative. Weird, but thats how tilited things are here.
But that aside, prior to the election I heard from collegues that MoveOn was doing this and also overheard in conversations peolple jokingly suggesting that they use PV's to vote early and often. This is why I wrote to Hunnekens with my concerns (see earlier post in this thread).
It is interesting to see that the 342 PV's already acknowledged by KC only refers to those PV's that they could find filled out empty envelopes. It is clear now the problem is much bigger than KC has acknowledged.
Even if MOveOn doesn't have traceable finger prints on this aspect of the election debacle, it is now clear, at least to me, that MoveOn has some explaining to do - preferably under oath in Wenatchee.
Posted by: DeadWood on March 13, 2005 01:30 PMTypos in KC doc 1.
1. Found these. There was a typo in the document. Precincts were listed under the 36th, and not the 43rd
SEA 43-1349, 1353, 1354, 1359
SAINT PAULS LUTHERAN CHURCH
MEETING/DINING HALL
701 N 43RD ST
SEATTLE, WA
2. Downtown
Another typo. Said 36 LD instead of 43.
SEA 43-1776
THE JOSEPHINUM
ACTIVITIES ROOM
1902 2ND AVE
SEATTLE, WA
3. Madison. Typo again. Should be the 43rd and not the 37th.
SEA 43-1888
MOUNT ZION BAPTIST CHURCH
FELLOWSHIP HALL
1634 19TH AVE
SEATTLE, WA
SOOOO, in my world, when there are typos in data, the entire line of data, and that section of the report need to be re-verified back to the original data source.
I have just been looking in the 43rd LD. Can anyone else find other stuff?
Precincts (not yet) found in document 1.
I could not find anywhere the following precincts: SEA 43-1264, SEA 43-1265, SEA 43-1357, SEA 43-1267, SEA 43-1268
SEA 43-1369, SEA 43-1370, SEA 43-1371
which were supposed to vote at:
SAINT BENEDICT PARISH CENTER
AUDITORIUM
1805 N 49TH ST
SEATTLE, WA
I find this amusing. Tee heee.. If this holds true, then Stefan's precint and polling place are not listed in the 82 page reconciliation report. Some one please find one of those missing precincts in those 82 pages. On page 60, it begins with Saint Andrews and the saints continue till page 62 with Saint Vincent de Paul. Otherwise, if not found, then ha ha tee hee
AND, in Document 2) I could see nothing in those 55 pages from "First Covenent Church" on the ??Loss of memory/power to the acuvote system on or about 9:30 AM. There are zeros everywhere for this polling place. Not a single mishap all day, even though power was down for a while and the AM?
Gregg, poll watcher for Denny Terrace and First Covenent.
Posted by: Gregg on March 13, 2005 05:34 PMUsing Gregg's second URL above (King County Canvass Report) I have found numerous listings from individual polling places that list Provisional ballots *may* have gone through the machine...but they claim they are unsure - but have no other explanation for their disappearance...
Then there are many notes showing Poll Inspectors actually fed these provisional ballots through the machines!! Here is one example..:
Duval Church : Inspector says he ran out of PB envelopes - so ran 26 ballots through accuvote - 4 other ballots have no identifying info other than precinct names. Breakdown for 30 ballots (26 plus 4) given info from provisionall ballot pages: 13 voters registered in KC at other polling places (went to wrong polling site), 11 voters were at correct site (possible errors; they were in supplemental pages, voting absentee or clercial error - e.g. wrong book), 5 non-registered - given info available, 1 illegible. Could not determine any clear info for the 4 ballots w/o identifying info from provisional pages, due to number of total provisionals (115 total).
This report is insane! There is no way for the canvass board to determine how many provisional ballots were actually fed through the accuvote machines! Yet - they chose to use the number 348??
That would be an incredibly low figure according to these notes!
With apologies to those who wish simply to rant, I would like to increase my understanding of the numbers.
Since you are more familar with this data, can you explain an observation I made based on the KCDiscrepancy.xls workbook?
Disclaimer - I have not mastered the definitions of what AbsDiff and PPG+ really mean. I did read the explanation tab but there is a difference between knowing and only thinking you know.
I counted the AbsDiff values for precincts that went Rossi and Gregoire (which I think is determined by the value of PPG+).
Gregoire (where PPG+ >0) sum of AbsDiff = 603
Rossi (where PPG+
Tied (where PPG+ =0) sum of AbsDiff = 10
The average AbsDiff per precinct was:
Gregoire = .366788
Rossi = .21286
Tied = .142857
The average NSOF per precinct was:
Gregoire = .224453
Rossi = .21286 (same as Rossie Avg AbsDiff)
Tied = .071429
BTW, I don't believe in coincidence to five decimal places.
Do these figures indicate AbsDiff is unexplicably slanted in favor of Gregoire? (Explicable other than fraud, I mean).
And please forgive me - as Rather said - courage!
Posted by: PGM on March 13, 2005 10:40 PMAbsDiff values for precincts:
Gregoire (where PPG+ is positive) sum AbsDiff = 603
Rossi (where PPG+ is negative) sum AbsDiff = 195
Tied (where PPG+ is zero) sum AbsDiff = 10
Perhaps there are even more.
The summary didn't total the number of ballots in the "Election Day MC" (Machine Count) and "Add-ons" columns.
Without the total for those columns, there isn't anything that would tip anyone off to the fact that some ballots, and therefore some precincts and polling places, have been omitted from the "reconciliation" effort.
I'm getting a little worried here. Are you going to actually accomplish something and get Dino in office like you've promised to? Precious days are slipping away, and the public is already starting to show less and less interest in this case. I appreciate that you're fighting this, but your efforts are starting to seem a bit, er... futile. We need to double our efforts to get Gregoire out NOW!!!!
Posted by: Concerned Republican on March 14, 2005 05:18 PMAs of right now (7:51PM), the Seattle PI is reporting that 63.4% of readers polled still care about the outcome of the hearings in Wenatchee.
Don't get discouraged (like I was last week). The fire is still burning. It's just that the MSM is trying to pee on the coals.
Posted by: ERNurse on March 14, 2005 07:51 PMSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAFE
love you
xXxXx
Binder.Singh
Posted by: BINDER on August 25, 2005 09:14 AM