King County issued a press release over the weekend reporting that the total number of recently discovered untabulated absentee ballots is 93. Intriguingly, these new ballots would be expected to add to Rossi's lead.
Although the release doesn't explicitly state that these were all found in opened (=validated and credited) outer envelopes, the wording strongly implies that fact.
Accordingly the voters should have all been credited, so (assuming that these ballots weren't simply planted) the discrepancy between absentee ballots counted and identified voters who could have cast those ballots now climbs to 881!
The county's news release also links to a file of precincts where these new ballots came from. Oddly, two of these ballots are attributed to "Precinct unidentifiable". Presumably, these were found outside any outer envelope, which have enough information to identify the precinct. I did an analysis of the precincts for the remaining 91, to see how the ballots might have been cast, assuming they matched the Gregoire/Rossi breakdown of other absentee ballots in the same precinct:
They would be expected to add 2 votes to Rossi's lead! Unlike a random sample of 91 King County absentees, which would be expected to add 16 votes to Gregoire's lead, these ballots are, on the whole, from pro-Rossi precincts. [I've posted my spreadsheet with this analysis, here. See the "Untabulated" worksheet]
These ballots should not be counted under any circumstances, but they do confirm the theory that the election was a "total mess" that should be set aside so a legitimate governor can be elected. And the discovery elevates the urgency of forcing King County to release the Absentee Ballot Audit Trail. The Audit Trail would tell us which batches these ballots came from and who would have been responsible for counting the number of ballots removed from the envelopes to ensure that they reconciled with the number of envelopes.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 03, 2005 01:13 PM | Email ThisWhen you say the votes on these 93 ballots shouldn't be counted, are you presuming that there has been too little security provided for the opened mail envelopes to ascertain with reasonable certainty that the security envelopes contain genuine ballots submitted before the deadline by eligible voters?
Posted by: Micajah on April 3, 2005 01:37 PMI looked at WAC 434-240-270 on the absentee ballot audit trail. King County would be required under WAC 434-240-270 to have "A reconciliation that all absentee ballots counted plus all absentee ballots rejected is equal to the total number of absentee ballots received", and under WAC 434-240-270(1) to keep "A record of when each absentee ballot application was received, the date the ballot was mailed or issued, and the date the absentee ballot was received".
I don't see how these two numbers could possibly match, and that is why King County has refused to release this information to you. Presumably, this reconciliation should have been done for the initial certification on 11/17/2004 and for each certification thereafter -- machine recount on 11/24/2004 and manual recount on 12/23/2004. Obviously, it was not.
One idea -- since there are 788 or 881 excess ballots over the number of voters credited, why don't they spend a few days, and manually sort the 560,000 or so accepted absentee ballot envelopes out by precinct, and then in alphabetical order by precinct?
That way, the actual accepted absentee ballot envelopes could be compared against the computer records of credited voters. Maybe King County failed to credit several hundred voters whose ballots were accepted? Or worse, maybe they credited voters who didn't even cast ballots or had them rejected.
The Democrats wanted the accepted absentee envelopes of ineligible convicted felons found and copied. During this process, some unopened inner ballot envelopes were discovered. Dean Logan then ordered a thorough search of all 560,000 or so accepted ballot envelopes for unopened inner security envelopes.
Apparently, the Democrats have a theory that some of these ineligible convicted felons were credited with voting, but didn't actually cast ballots. If so, such improper crediting should not be limited to ineligible felons and should be fairly evenly distributed among all the other people voting (or more correctly, not voting).
Definitely, if the Democrats find *ANY* ineligible felons credited with voting absentee, but who did not actually cast absentee ballots, then King County should be forced to recheck all 560,000 or so accepted absentee ballot envelopes.
There could be a lot more than 788 or 881 mystery voterless absentee ballots out there, if we start to find improperly credited voters.
Posted by: Richard Pope on April 3, 2005 01:49 PMHAVE THE FBI OR KING COUNTY SHERIFF FINGER PRINT THE ENVELOPES AND FIGURE OUT WHO HAS TOUCHED THEM.
Have the ink on the ballots checked to see if they are different or all the same. Examine that ballots and figure out what really happened.
Then during the Governor Race Contest have people be deposed under oath and the possible penalty of jail time for purjury explain why their figner prints were on the ballots and what actions they took in regard to them.
I sense that the entire cover-up story is about to come appart at the seams, if the pressure is kept up.
Posted by: Bob on April 3, 2005 03:20 PMThey could very well be, who knows, what I know is that it is crystal that no-one knows who won this race. but, that assumes that there isn't any fraud in King County Elections. Big leap of faith there!
Posted by: sgmmac on April 3, 2005 03:33 PMI think there are activists that work in that office and they did the ballot stuffing that Shark identifies with the 881 more ballots than credited voters.
Posted by: DeadManVoting (aka Iguana) on April 3, 2005 04:08 PMThanks to Stefan, we're all well acquainted with the fact that Dean Logan did not do what the law required of him in the last election. In his remarks, Mr. Logan clings to a few particulars of the law, while obviously violating its spirit, and apparently as well, quite a few of its other particulars.
I wonder if someone could explain to me the difference between what Logan has done to support an illegal election and what President Bush (and the vast majority of other Republican officials) have done to support illegal immigration. I could list the parallels, but I think they are pretty obvious.
According to the polls I've seen, over 70 percent of Americans think our immigration laws should be enforced. I wish the people I've been voting for would pay attention to that majority -- and to the law.
In spite of my great respect and appreciation for what Stefan has done, I don't think that illegal immigration is going to be a topic on this site -- at least not the apparent complicity of the Republicans in it. Not wishing abuse Stephan's hospitality, or to be considered a troll, I'll make this my last comment here. Best to you all.
Posted by: Boonie on April 3, 2005 05:49 PMdino rossi must give up for the good of the people, it doesnt matter that the election was tainted, stolen, misappropriated, embezzled, besmirched, bastardized, debased, and putrified.
This sore loser should drop his tawdry lawsuit and take the high road. Anything less would dishonor those who have fought and died for our freedoms and democracy from iwo jima to afghanistan and iraq. Surely these brave soldiers who gave their lives for our liberty would turn over in their graves to see such a small matter as a few misbegotten votes which altered the outcome of an election be fought over in court like kids in a schoolyard.
there you have it.
Posted by: ralph on April 3, 2005 07:50 PMFunny how the King County Council and the Democrat-run state legislature - so quickly pushed through a bill to promote an All Mail Voting system! With ALL of the problems...(that just keep coming!) of absentee voting - why on earth would the Dems rabidly race this into law?
And now we find that counties can withold the very audit trail that would reveal fraud and error in absentee tallies? Come on!
Where is that elections official from Oregon now? He bragged about the lack of error and fraud in an 'all mail' voting system - yet we have seen numerous instances of just that in one General election alone! Why would the Dems in our legislature ignore the myriad of problems we are experiencing with absentee voting in this state - and take the word of some election flunky from Oregon?
This is absurd!
Posted by: Deborah on April 3, 2005 07:52 PMAddressing Bush, the Pontiff said, "Mr President, I have heard how you are enemies but I see with my own eyes it is not true. Bless you, my son!" And with that the Popemobile sped off.
"Who was that?" the President asked Dick Cheney.
"Don't know," the VP answered, "Want to go for another shark?"
"Might as well," Dubya replied, "bait's holdin' up...."
Posted by: Chuck Miller on April 3, 2005 08:03 PMWe could say that the "loss" of these 93 ballots among the envelopes shows beyond any doubt what we knew with some certainty already: Logan's motley crew didn't keep track of the number of ballots they had received, so they couldn't know how many ballots should show up in the vote tabulation. That's a mess.
It may only be the result of stupidity, laziness, incompetence, etc. It's also a way to make it pretty hard to know whether someone found a way to add some ballots to the tabulation once the razor-thin difference between the two major party candidates became obvious -- or even after the initial certification of the county's results.
Posted by: Micajah on April 3, 2005 08:29 PM...a model for all leftists to emulate.
(Dave who?)
The fact that the ballots exist, weren't counted in the original tally, and are only now just being discovered tells us that something is wrong with how we run elections in this county (and this state).
The system needs to be fixed, people need to be ID'd when they vote (as they are ID'd when they exercise other rights: vote, marry, buy a gun, get a passport, drink alcohol, etc.), it needs to be shown that they're: alive, 18 or over, U.S. Citizens, non-felons, and haven't already voted in the election. (8 of the 19, Sep. 11th hijackers were registered voters)
We need to have an election that determines who our governor is. If it's the same person that it is right now, fine, at least I'll know that it's fair.
Posted by: YourGovernorCostsMillion$ on April 3, 2005 09:39 PMOne can postulate several reasons. A likely reason is that ballots from a heavily republican district were set aside deliberately. There may be something else that the ballots have in common. If so, it hasn't been revealed.
Bob E
Posted by: Bob E on April 4, 2005 01:38 AMState Nick Handy Director of Elections Olympia WA
Local Bob Terwilliger Snohomish County Auditor Everett WA
I don't hold out a lot of hope for that outfit:/
Nice try, Ralph, but I sensed your heart wasn't in it.
Posted by: South County on April 4, 2005 05:15 AM