It's Watergate deja vu day. First, Deep Throat is revealed. Next, a man named Nixon is impeached.
That is to say the testimony of State Director of Elections Nixon "Nick" Handy was impeached. Nixon Handy is something of a funny person, as in funny peculiar. He was forced out of his position as Director of the Port of Olympia in 2003 under a cloud of scandal (something about ripping off the taxpayers for a few hundred thousand dollars). His old friend (and campaign contribution receptacle) Sam Reed appointed him to his current post just a few months before the 2004 election, even though he had no experience with elections. No matter. Handy's forte is "public sector management", which appears to mean defending public sector employees (e.g. the "elections community") from having to be responsible to the public.
The King County Elections Scandal is the most serious violation of public trust that I've lived under since Watergate. Except it's clear from today's testimony that it's not just the King County Elections Scandal. It's the Washington State Elections Scandal. And Nixon Handy is a central figure.
Back in January, Handy realized that the perception more ballots were counted than there were voters was "gaining traction" and "undermining public confidence in elections". Some quotes from emails Handy sent:
"I am completely convinced that the reconciliation [sic, should be crediting] issue being raised by the Republicans in the litigation is completely unfounded...If we can successfully demonstrate that this is an unfounded claim, I would hope that this would severely undermine the confidence of the court in the other R claims"So he instigated a stealth campaign involving the state's election officials to counter misinformation about voter crediting procedures in order to undermine the Republican claims in the election contest and to bolster public confidence, or something. I suspect that this discredited article was a product of that campaign.
Except that the Republican claims about crediting were not "completely unfounded". Although crediting numbers are not perfect and some discrepancies are attributable to clerical error, they did in fact point to a number of serious problems -- the discrepancy of more ballots than voters did in fact point to the hundreds more unverified provisional ballots than King County initially admitted went into the Accuvotes; the recently discovered missing absentee ballots showed up as a discrepancy of more voters than ballots in some precincts; Another discrepancy of, I believe, several hundred more polling place ballots than polling place voters was attributable to absentee voters illegally casting regular ballots at the polls. The total discrepancy of 875 more absentee ballots than absentee voters has an associated 808 net discrepancy between ballots counted and credited voters. There is still no explanation for this. The campaign to provide "accurate information" to voters was little more than a conspiracy to spread disinformation to deflect legitimate criticism from election officials incompetence and malfeasance and to undermine litigation claims. At least Sam Reed had the good sense to put the kaibosh on some of this.
In other testimony, Handy's credibility was impeached when he was forced to climb down and admit, contrary to earlier assertions, that the crediting of absentee voters is required before certification.
Now that he's been impeached, Nixon Handy should follow the lead of Richard Nixon, do us all a favor and resign.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at May 31, 2005 11:54 PM | Email ThisGreat story, by the way, I do remember Watergate!
Posted by: sgmmac on June 1, 2005 12:44 AM(Yes! Even more appalling than the outright, admitted falsification of a report by Nicole Way and Garth Fell, two mid-level King County elections managers, and the fraudulent submission of that report to the canvass board without explanation by Elections Superintendent Bill Huennekens. And you thought that creation and proffer of false and fraudulent documents related to a federal and gubernatorial election was as bad as it could get? Think again!)
Handy Nixon admitted that when legitimate questions about numeric discrepancies between ballots cast and voters participating were raised by one popular blog (SP), one lone honest reporter at the Times (Keith Ervin), and one knowledgable King County Councilmember (David Irons) which in turn, generated more honest questions from other press, elected officials, and the public, that the following activity was set in motion:
Rather than devoting time and energy to discovering the source of the discrepancy and either correcting it or fully reporting the effect of the problem on the results, an activity that would have done a lot to redeem these election officials in the eyes of the public, Handy Nixon assembled a huge committee of election officials statewide to publicly support King County in their accounting flaws, to agree to mouth the same identical message to the press and the public, and to create the disingenuous and manipulative "talking points" that included among other things, the patently false claim that voter crediting had "nothing" to do with absentee ballot reconciliation in King County.
I sincerely hope that the names of the Hall of Shame Auditors who participated in this cover-up will be noted by voters in their home counties, and that they will be sent packing next election. (Some of these jokers are up for election this fall, folks!)
Posted by: Susan B. Anthony on June 1, 2005 12:50 AMDuring my time at King County elections I saw plenty of characters, poor administrators, and questionable behavior. Just when I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse they truck out Nick Handy. Reed should be ashamed and embarrassed to have him on the staff.
Handy shouldn't be allowed to resign he should be fired tomorrow. He used the guise of public trust in elections to immediately go to work to cover up election problems instead of beginning investigations into the problems back in January.
Posted by: Joe on June 1, 2005 12:54 AMDeborah, I always enjoy your comments; see you guys in the morning.
Posted by: California Dreamer on June 1, 2005 12:58 AMClearly Handy had an agenda.
Posted by: Mr. Cynical on June 1, 2005 03:12 AMWe never did find out WHO requested that letter.
Do you think it was NIXON HANDY??????
Too bad the R's did depose and ask Mattingly that question.
2. Handy went in house with his client, lands commissioner Boyle, and then ran as an R. Why an R, because he knew Jennifer Belcher was going to run as a D and he would lose to her in the primary.
3. Handy got the job as ex director of the Port of Olympia with zippo port experience. He demanded and got significant salary increases and proceeded on a ambitious growth plan that included bringing in some old cronies, spending millions on cargo cranes from New Orleans and building various facilities that competed directly with neighboring private marinas. When asked why he was doing that, he drew an analogy to coffee shops, stating that when Starbucks came into Olympia, other coffee shops survived if they had a good product. I pointed out that his analogy was flawed given the Port is publicly subsidized.
4. As for Handy's working as a mole for the D's, his spouse is a liberal Thurston Co. Superior Court judge. Handy's appointment as director of state elections was critized at the time since he had zippo election experience other than losing the lands commissioner race and his spouse's judicial elections. The e-mail Foreman used to ram down Handy's throat is likely the tip of the iceberg. Handy doesn't want Rossi's team to prevail because the screw up occurred on his watch which will validate criticisms of him when he was appointed. I think Reed's team put him on as one of the SOS's attorneys of record to provide cover for those communications. BTW, how can Handy be one of Reed's attorneys when the state constitution says state officials are represented by the AGO? Maybe he received an appointment as a "special AAG" for the case.
5. As for Jeff Even, he's represented the SOS's office for years. He intervened on behalf of the SOS for Pierce County in seeking to overturn election law violations found against the Pierce Co. auditor by Thurston Co. Superior Court. In that case, the trial court found that Pierce Co. had violated state election laws by running a ballot processing (enhancement/remarking) operation and an unannounced, guarded and locked location (i.e. a wearhouse owned by an electricians union). The Pierce Co. Auditor was running two ballot processing operations at the time, one was publicly advertized per state law which (at the time) required ballot processing to be advertised per the public meeting law. Even was able to convince the Court of Appeals that there was no "meeting" hence no violation of the law. Readers may recall that the Pierce Co. auditor was later found to have falsified her educational credentials, lied about them under oath, resulting in a recall which came too late and failed to gather enough steam.
Protecting the status quo is their motto.
Posted by: Newman on June 1, 2005 07:57 AMMaggie, that would be Animal Control Officer, and you are correct about Handy not being fit to be one.
At least they have to understand and follow the laws governing their agencies.
I love how wingnuts attack their own whenever they don't agree with them. Sam Reed, Handy, you name it, if they speak truth and don't sell out their integrity for the party line, well the name calling and the conspiracy theories just flow. I'm surprised Deborah isn't claiming a super-secret federal investigation.
Oh well, the party is over, except for the shouting. I know you are all impressed with Dale Foreman's bluster, but the judge surely isn't, and he must be wondering day after day as the GOP show they have nothing but hot wind why he must sit through this. "They promised me fraud," he thinks, "They promised me ballot stuffing, but the best they can do is call a Republican 'biased' against them when he disagrees with the party line..., what idiots."
The good news is that since the GOP has no grounds for appeal at this point, that this will all be over by mid-July. Then you all can go on to whatever little conspiracy theory you have. Hope you all have stalked up on your tinfoil for your hats.
Me? I'm just looking forward to the meltdown and name calling when Judge Bridges upholds the law and throws this case out.
Posted by: JDB on June 1, 2005 09:36 AMThis mouth-breather would have us believe that Handy was one of us, when his total lack of ethics, professionalism, and morals clearly show him to be a liberal.
Poor JDB - apparently the auto-asphyxiation has damaged your brain ;'}
Posted by: alphabet soup on June 1, 2005 10:35 AMAnd you have to get your slanders straight. Liberals are overly conserned with feelings and touching goodness, it is conservatives that have "total lack of ethics, professionalism, and morals." Look at Dale Foreman's opening. Heck, look at every post on this board.
Love you babe,
JDB
Er, no.
Go lick somebody else's brownie, troll
I may be an interloper here, but you are decidedly unwelcome. If you actually had anything to say, it might be otherwise.
Like my old buddy used to say, "a fisters follerin yew"
Posted by: alphabet soup on June 1, 2005 02:14 PMAnd what's with all the homoerotic imagery? Your not a close friend of Mayor West, are you? It is always the closeted right wingers who are the sickest, well, you know.
And, if I had nothing to say, why do you have to respond to it with such visciousness? Admit it, you know I'm right. I would say it is driving you insane, but let's face it, you made that short trip a long time ago.
Posted by: JDB on June 1, 2005 02:56 PMI'm talking scatological, which is the sort of imagery when I read your "contributions".....
There are a few lefties who come here to get info, some who come to debate, and the rest who are here to disrupt.
Since you don't know sh!t (although you are obviously full of it), you fall into the later.
Mostly, I just like to encourage you to post more - it's fun watching you try to spell ;'}
Posted by: alphabet soup on June 1, 2005 03:27 PM