Peter Kirsanow, a member of the US Civil Rights Commission, has written this article for the National Review, summarizing the dispute, and the Republican claims. From a quick glance, I would say that it is a good summary, something you might want to send to someone who is wondering what the trial is all about.
One detail I found particularly interesting: He cites a paper that found that felons vote about 70 percent Democratic. Assuming that is a national estimate, that fits well with my rough estimate that Gregoire got 60 percent of the felon vote here. (It would be lower here, I believe, because Washington has proportionately fewer of the minorities who commit felonies and vote Democratic.)
Posted by Jim Miller at May 25, 2005 05:24 PM | Email ThisOther than that, why don't you post more often on NRO? At least smack Goldberg around on occasion after wanting to take you snipe hunting. ;)
Posted by: Danny on May 25, 2005 05:40 PMAnd anyone else reading- it's National Review. Not the National Review. Just plain old, National Review. Technically, that's not even right since the article comes from National Review Online, or NRO to those who know. In either case there is no "the".
Regards,
Chuck
Posted by: chuck Miller on May 25, 2005 05:44 PMKirsanow says "... thousands more votes being counted than there were eligible voters." He gets it right in later in that paragraph - more ballots than voters recorded as having voted.
However, it seems that almost everyone not reading and posting on SP don't get the difference between eligible (registered) voters and credited voters (voters who were marked by election officials as having voted.)
Is that hard? I don't think so.
Posted by: mac on May 25, 2005 06:11 PMThere are so many facts that are dependent on the context that's used to explain them because a certain person brought it to light after another person came clean about something because Stefan crunched some serious numbers that took five weeks to obtain through Freedom of Information though it was insisted through the media that the numbers were always available all the while the Dems had the audacity to pull some serious stuff in broad daylight.......oh you get the idea.
There's no way to summarize this whole thing. In order for someone to get it right they have to hear the whole thing the way it happened. A great way to start would be to mention the whole "won the first two machine counts prior to losing the third MANUAL count." Without anything else most people will immediately roll their eyes when you say that.
Posted by: The Dude on May 25, 2005 06:34 PMThe only reason that Rossi can say that is because King County misplaced a bunch of ballots. If those ballots hadn't been misplaced, Gregoire would have won the machine counts and the Republicans would have had to come up with the money for the manual count. In other words, being able to make the statement above about Rossi winning the machine counts depended completely on King County's incompetence.
I heard Goldstein making this point on Carlson's show and Sharkansky seemed to have difficulty understanding it. I found Sharkansky's arguments weak. The real issue is showing the existence of fraud, and mostly what I've seen is incompetence. And Sharkansky doesn't seem to have realized that the incompetence worked in Rossi's favor in the initial counts.
Posted by: Ronsch99 on May 25, 2005 08:20 PMConsidering how many there were and who was doing it, those alone, if counted correctly, might have given Rossi a margin of victory that would have been far beyond the automatic recount number.
You can't talk about particular aspects of the nonsense in a vacuum and have your conclusions make sense. You must include all the relevant factors.
That doesn't even get into the seemingly long-forgotten subject of military ballots.
Posted by: scott158 on May 25, 2005 08:36 PMEU call to re-run treaty referendums
By John Thornhill in Paris, George Parker in Brussels and Betrand Benoit in Berlin
Published: May 25 2005 20:22 | Last updated: May 25 2005 20:22
France and the Netherlands should re-run their referendums to obtain the "right answer" if their voters reject Europe's constitutional treaty in imminent national ballots, Jean-Claude Juncker, the holder of the EU presidency, said on Wednesday.
The Luxembourg prime minister said all 25 EU member countries should continue their attempts to ratify the treaty whatever the outcome of the French and Dutch votes.
His comments reflect a mood of deepening pessimism among Europe's leaders about the outcome of the referendums."
As a lifelong democrat, I was as defensive as they come right up and until, the admission they made up a number on an audit document and then signing it under oath.
That my friend is fraud. There is absolutely no way around that. none. ADMITTED TO UNDER OATH! What is the difference between that and Enron?
King County, to this day can't even tell us how many ballots they started with. How can we know? Then election workers admit they took ballots home with them, before the election, with no accountability whatsoever?
Then when you mix in the fact that 1 county with 1/3 of the voters account for nearly all the improprieties, that number into the thousands and 38 other counties got it right? oh and the Rossi precincts kept missing previously counted votes while the Gregoire precints kept "finding" votes?
This is one democrat that is steamed at his own party for defending these practices.
Posted by: who'dathunk! on May 25, 2005 08:51 PMI just found 1,500 ballots marked for Rossi in my closet yesterday. What reason is there for believing them to be any less valid than the ballots that Democrats have "found" in various places?
If a batch of n ballots falls out of chain-of-custody control and disappears, that will add a margin of +/- n. If a batch of n ballots which are supposedly the same ones that went missing but were not in chain-of-custody control is (re)added to the ballot pool, the uncertainty is not eliminated but instead becomes +/- 2n.
Chain of custody is absolutely critical for ballots. Any ballot which could be handled by members of one party without members of the other party being there to supervise should be deemed suspect. Since there was no chain of custody for some of the magical mystery ballots between the time they were supposedly cast and when they were 'discovered', there is no way of knowing whether they were even cast in the real election (as opposed to having been "cast" the day they were "discovered")
IMHO, the most likely reason the ballots weren't tallied in the machine counts is that they didn't exist then.
Posted by: supercat on May 25, 2005 09:11 PMWell, I'll agree, I'm pretty steamed too about the truly crappy King County Elections department under a Democratic administration. And there's no question that there were lies involved, under oath, and they should be fired or put into prison. But the lies weren't in the service of Gregoire, they were in the service of covering the incompetent behinds. It's indictable behavior but it isn't fraud.
Posted by: Ronsch on May 25, 2005 09:12 PMNo New Taxes - 10 Billion later!
Posted by: GS on May 25, 2005 09:19 PMRonsch - So you're saying that KC is like Dan Rather; "fake but accurate"?
Posted by: Dogbert on May 25, 2005 09:27 PMThose ballots didn't self-select outta there!
Posted by: Michele on May 25, 2005 09:32 PMI suggest you do the same. make sure you scroll 1/2 way down the page. check especially into intrinsic fraud, fraud on the court, fraud in law, and especially, constructive fraud also known as legal fraud.
Read slowly and preferably in a quiet room to allow for reflection. Denial is a difficult thing to overcome sometimes but, I have faith in you.
Posted by: who'dathunk! on May 25, 2005 10:36 PMI just meant to point out that Rossi too, in a way, benefited from the King County screwup. I really didn't mean to raise the issue of the outcome itself which has been argued and argued on this and other blogs. Professionally I'm an an econometrician, that is to say a statistician, and the outcome in my view was within the error variance. In other words, the outcome was random, basically the flip of a coin. And a flip of the coin has settled many an election in this country. Anyway I won't argue that the incompetence hides a true win for Gregoire. But neither one for Rossi. Personally I would have liked to have seen another election right away, which I would argue Gregoire would have won because there were a lot Democrats who sat on their hands in her race for various reasons who would have come back into the fold when they realized who Rossi was. If that election were held today, though, I'm not so sure she would win.
But again we really don't have to argue all this over again. I'm sure my thoughts on this have been all been said and argued over and settled on this blog.
You said, "incompetence worked in Rossi's favor in the initial counts." That is pure conjecture with nothing but your say so. I fear my friend that you fall into the trap of wanting something to be so badly that your reasoning, or lack thereof, is tainted.
Posted by: Ron A. on May 25, 2005 11:07 PMKC had motive, opportunity, we have circumstantial evidence, and now admissions of fraud. Be honest, even a photograph of theft wouldn't convicne most of you (i recall we once had a blue dress with dna on it, and most of you all weren't really convinced)
It is encouraging to see your change in attitude about this election process.
I think it is healthy for us to disagree politically and I welcome your challenge at the polls. But we must ALL agree that the election must be LEGITIMATE for us to be able to accept the other side winning the argument and the votes.
If you truly mean what you are saying now, get your side to find a new candidate (Fraudoire is toast at this point) and make your case this November. If you have the better argument, you might win in spite of the sour moods right now.
But I give you points for admitting the process broke down.
Posted by: Elmo on May 25, 2005 11:49 PM
We could expect the "most average" result to be split down the middle - of those that lost or gained ballots, about half of each the Rossi and Gregoire precincts would gain ballots and about half would lose. Still, with random distributions, you could rightly expect some variation from this equal split. The problem comes in how extreme the outcome gets. The more extreme, the lower the probability the outcome was natural, not artificial.
Considering the precincts that gained or lost ballots, for *every* Rossi precinct to lose ballots and *every* Gregoire precinct to gain ballots, is like flipping a coin and having it continue to come out heads for the same number of times as the number of precincts with a variation. What's the probability?
A simple rule of thumb in this would be to just multiply 1/2 by itself the number of varying precincts. 4 precincts = 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 = 6.25%. 10 precincts would be 0.09%, or less than 1 in 1,000. I don't know how many precincts have this condition, so plug the numbers in yourself.
At this point it just isn't a statistically valid argument to say, "but it could happen." Those days of saying, "well, a cup could fall up instead of down," are mercifully over.
No matter the intent of the workers/voters, the outcome is clearly artificial. It's time to clean up the process, and revote.
Posted by: Ricardo on May 25, 2005 11:54 PM(It would be lower here, I believe, because Washington has proportionately fewer of the minorities who commit felonies and vote Democratic.)
I will give you that it is likely any minority felons whom voted illegally might have voted Democratic based on their likelihood to do so, but even this is an aging stereotype because many more people of minority status are voting Republican, but this still in no way insinuates any given percentage of the illegal votes were done by minorities at all. I will also give that most felons probably vote Democratic since the majority of convicted felons come from urban areas.
As for the “paper” that Peter Kirsanow of the US Civil Rights Commission refers to, it does not say that 70 percent of felons vote Democratic. It only says that 70 percent of felons who have served their time and paid back society, “if given the right” to vote again for President would have voted Democratic and voted for Clinton. It also reports that the 1994 US Senate would most likely not have been lost to Republicans if felons had not disenfranchised by their felon status, thus never allowing the Gingrich Revolution. This research paper was based in large part on felons who lost their right to vote during and prior to the first Clinton Administration, data that is now more than 10 years old. But most importantly, this report in no way examines felons who have continued to break the law by illegally voting nor how they would have voted in any Federal election after 1994, nor any State election at any time.
That said, I disagree with you on one central point. You think, as many do, that we should expect variance in the counts of votes. That's a natural argument for an econometrican, but I think it is wrong when applied to vote counting.
My basic argument is simple. If the standards are clear, we can count one vote correctly. If we have counted n votes correctly, we can add one more and have a correct count of n + 1 votes.
With clear standards and competent election administration, there will be no errors in the count. (Better technology would make that easier, and I have made some suggestions on that here.) Some of the counties came very close to zero errors in their counts, showing that it can be
done. It is a mistake to believe that a certain amount of error in counting votes is inevitable, as both logic and experience show.
And since you are an econometrician, I would urge you to take a look, or another look, at the problem I have been calling "distributed vote fraud". I'll have a longer post reviewing what we have learned about the problem up soon, but for now I will just say that I think loose election laws and lax election administration encourage individuals and small groups to cheat, and that Democratic candidates are more likely to benefit from this kind of fraud than Republicans.
VanWarren - Do you have a link to the paper that you can post, or can you email me a copy?
The only reason that Rossi can say that is because King County misplaced a bunch of ballots."
You seem to want to overlook the fact that King County has claimed to have "found" over 980 ballots from the Nov 2,2004 election by their own admission. Please go back and check the PI articles for each of the 12 times King County announced that they found ballots. BTW, that is 3 times the amount misplaced in the 2000 election.
Second,
Fraud is fraud. Gregiore benefited from the King County elections workers attempts to defraud the voters of King County. All the legal definition states is "a deliberate attempt to obtain an unfair gain." With the release of the "new information" that King County has more ballots than voters by over 4000. Just where did those ballots come from?
What difference does it make if CG knew about was involved or anything with the KC screw ups? This isn't about CG, it is about an election system that systematically screwed up and as a result the election can not be trusted. People desreve an election and an election system they can trust. Therefore re-vote.
Posted by: Fred on May 26, 2005 07:06 AMhttp://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002288629_joni26.html
"It's the worst-kept secret that if Gregoire ultimately loses, she blew the race at least partly in Pierce County. Gregoire did not connect with people here as well as Rossi, who spoke directly to issues that affect working families and small businesses. He came to Tacoma many times; he spoke to people in the churches. His anti-tax mantra resonates well here.
If there is a repeat of the race, his recent message that he wouldn't have raised taxes to balance the state budget, as Gregoire did, will boost him again."
Posted by: Frank on May 26, 2005 07:16 AMI am at a loss to understand what your point is, or why you think that matters.
Posted by: Bostonian on May 26, 2005 08:17 AM1. What makes them dangerous is not so much that they are run by the socialist/moonbat fringe as much as that these elements are Machiavelian. That is what makes them so inclined to cheat.
2. I question whether it is possible for moderate forces to prevail; look at where the money for the demo party is coming from. For moderate forces to prevail, there need to be large numbers of volunteer/activists -and- moneied interest groups and individuals willing to support a moderate over a moonbat. I just don't see that happening. I hope that I'm wrong, but I'm afraid that this is a fight to the death.
Posted by: Dogbert on May 26, 2005 08:29 AMI couldn't agree more with starboardhelm. We do need a two party system. When either goes to an extreme the choice is diminished, and we start getting what happened in KC. Help them come back to reasonable. The dems have done a lot of good for this country. The fringe that controls them now is, in my opinion, doing a lot of harm. I think that explains their continued loss in the polls and the desperate measures being taken. Help them, America needs it.
If the reps aren't controlled from going to far out while the dems realign themselves the reps will be out of favor again.
Posted by: Fred on May 26, 2005 08:30 AMIntrest groups. They can be extreme, or moderate, or ecclectic, but they make stuff happen. The problem comes when some interest groups can intimidate and crowd out other groups. That is what has happend to the demos since 2000.
Posted by: Dogbert on May 26, 2005 08:45 AM1. Lying in official documents (documents required by law) to conceal incompetence is still fraud- even if the those lying weren't trying to flip the election.
2. The magnitude of the lie was large- they didn't just sweep 5 unreconciled ballots under the rug. They ignored thousands of unreconcilable errors, enough to have flipped the election even if they weren't intending to.
3. The nature of the lie just happened to be such that if others were trying to flip the election, they could succeed without easy detection.
4. There is impressive statistical evidence presented yesterday that while county employees were lying (they claim, just to cover their backsides), others were busy rigging the ballot boxes in numbers large enough to change the election.
5. Therefore, due to the lies (fraud) committed by county employees, and the indications of ballot-stuffing, we can't guarantee the integrity of the election, and a new election should be called.
I think it really agravates us when people disagree with proposition # 1. You seemed to want to call what Way and Fell did "lying" or "incompetence" instead of "fraud", like kids might say "I didn't 'steal' your money, I just 'borrowed' it." We can't help it, but it makes us want to pound our heads on our keyboards.
There is a system of voting called "approval voting" that rewards those with the greatest approval. Basically people vote for all those candidates they approve of. The one with the most votes wins.
Posted by: blurp on May 26, 2005 09:37 AMOf course there will never be any certain way of determining the exact outcome of the 2004 election had KC done what they were supposed to do. Within that statement is the only meaningful premise that actually matters. Inductively, it strains any sensible observer’s credibility to be asked to conclude that ineptitude minus culpability exists where deliberate lies are told by those who have everything to gain by telling them. Theoretically Nicole Way could be pure as the driven snow, as well as Heunnekens and others, but we are not observing theory here. They are partisans, and partisans have reasons to lie and cheat. Theoretically, they are supposed to be above even the mere appearance of impropriety. Instead Democrats rely on an appeal to informality or benign impropriety as a posed surfeit of propriety. It is as if to say – I’m a democrat (one of the good people) – so how could you possibly suspect me of wrong-doing?
The problem is quite simple, and the solution is simple as well. Occam’s razor says “the simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable and that an explanation for unknown phenomena should first be attempted in terms of what is already known.”We know that KC Elections officials (Democrats) were responsible to oversee the election.
That is – things we know with more than reasonable certainty and not just surmise.
We need a real election to elect a real Governor for Washington State.
Those who believe that Christine Gregoire was duly elected by this process are simply partisans with no regard for the truth – only the outcome. Liberals believe anything so long as there are no facts involved. What can you expect? Endless shallow caviling rationalizations.
Posted by: Amused by liberals on May 26, 2005 10:43 AMIf you are interested, here is the PDF recap of the Republicans case:
Republicans' Trial Brief, which summarizes their case for setting aside the election.
And here is the recap of the Democrats case:Democrats' Trial Brief, which summarizes their case for keeping Gregoire in office. They offer two alternative arguments.
Interesting reading!
Posted by: alphabet soup on May 26, 2005 10:45 AMI am, and thanks for the links. I see that the plaintiffs assert the election must be set aside if "error or misconduct ... leaves the outcome in doubt". The brief states though that the judge disagrees, and that the plaintiffs have to show that the illegal votes changed the result of the election. The brief goes on to state that they feel the judge arrived at this concusion "without the benefit of complete briefing on the matter". So this issue may have to be decided by a higher court.
In other words, the plaintiffs are claiming that error is all that's needed but the judge seems to want fraudulent, i.e., illegal votes, to be the issue. This will be a problem, I believe, because it'll be hard to prove that illegal votes changed the outcome.
Posted by: ronsch on May 26, 2005 12:42 PMAfrican Americans, by the way, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding and middle class, only make up 5.4% of King County's population. (The largest minority group -- by far -- in King County is Asian American, at 10.8%.) And, the percentage of King County's population that is Hispanic is actually less than that of the state as a whole. (5.5% vs. 7.5%) King County votes more Democratic than Republican -- but that can't be attributed to a huge minority population.
Given this, and the fact that average per capita and family income is higher, and the poverty rate is lower, in King County than in the state as a whole -- poverty in Washington State is primarily a rural problem -- and the fact that those ex-felons who do vote are likely, like voters in general, to enjoy more stable and even more affluent economic circumstances than the population in general much less the ex-felon population in general, most of the assumptions being thrown around about who these people are seem to be based on negative stereotypes that don't describe either King County or our state. In fact, the arguments being made are, rather than being based in Washington realities, pretty much entirely based in urban stereotypes associated with the abandoned, neglected, dying industrial cities of the Northeast and Upper Midwest. These are stereotypes that Republicans love to throw around because they are emotionally freighted and divisive -- but, they aren't applicable here. The real fact -- that Seattle and its surrounding King County suburbs, our state's most diverse and populous area, is thriving, healthy, prosperous, a magnet for talented, ambitious people from all over the state, the region and the world, is something that everyone in Washington State benefits from and should take pride in and celebrate.
Instead, the Republican party is running around trying to paint a totally false picture -- TO THE WORLD -- of Seattle and environs as a corrupt urban wasteland.
WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
Is your greed for power so great that you would slander your state and work against its best interests just to insert the very mediocre Rossi into office?
The simple fact is, the people of Washington State didn't find either of these candidates very appealing -- which is why the vote was so close.
The best thing the Republicans could do for themselves would be to end their childish lawsuit, stop bad mouthing our state and our election system (one of the cleanest in the country) to the entire world, and start devoting some time to finding a better quality candidate to run next time around.
Posted by: esmense on May 27, 2005 06:21 AM
Creative pile of crap. The fact that you are stupid enough to believe it speaks for itself.
For your sake I hope it made you feel better to vent because the only other thing it accomplished was show how much of an idiot you are.
Now go back to your bong moron.
Posted by: Amused by liberal morons on May 27, 2005 10:53 AM
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