In all fairness to King County Elections, they didn't just count provisional ballots from ineligible voters. It also looks like they disenfranchised some legitimate voters by not counting what appear to be properly cast provisional ballots.
For example, this voter was credited with voting and the provisional ballot database table says the ballot was counted. Nevertheless, the actual ballot is still safely tucked in its sealed envelope.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 19, 2005 12:02 AM | Email ThisIn the old days a method of interrogation (death of the suspect was common side effect) called pressing was used. Large flat stones where place on the subjects chest to encourage the appropriate answers. The stones while not crushing the victim made expanding the chest to breath very difficult. Eventually the person would no longer have the strength to breath and suffocated.
I propose piling all the questionable ballots, false statements etc... on Mr. Logan's chest to encourage him to come clean with about and the goings on in KCE.
No advocating violence, just some motivation for Mr. Logan to do the right thing.
Posted by: JCM on October 19, 2005 07:37 AMTick, tock.
Posted by: Hank Bradley on October 19, 2005 08:44 AMThen if your vote "is counted" which means that KCE ran the envelope through the scanner, the obscure name you choose had better show up as '1 vote' in the final full vote statistics.
Posted by: Al on October 19, 2005 09:14 AMWouldn't a long piece of rope be less expensive than forcing a hand counting every ballot?
Posted by: huckleberry on October 19, 2005 09:44 AMThat's a brilliant suggestion, but will it work? I say this in complete ignorance about how write-ins are actually counted, except that I'm fairly sure the machine can't do the complete process by itself. If the actual tabulation of the specific write-in name is separate from the processing of the rest of the ballot, the presence or absence of the "special" name doesn't really prove anything about the rest of your ballot.
Can anyone else who is more familiar with the actual write-in handling clarify how this works?
Posted by: Kirk Parker on October 19, 2005 09:46 AMFeds, local authorities, judges, none seem to care if laws are broken, votes disenfranchised, or lies told on witness stands.
We have been told to stuff it, don't complain, and in the immortal words of Judge Bridges, fix it ourselves.
Since the only way we can fix it is to burn it down (illegal, by the way) the election system in this state will remain broken and we will continue to get the benefit of unsolicited sex from our politicians.
From what I have seen in the last 11 months, it is a fool who believes anything will change for the better.
I'm sitting this one out. For those who think I am making a mistake doing so, I challenge you to show me where my vote will make ANY difference, legal or not. I have no way of knowing (or finding out) whether the system is accurate or my vote counted at all.
Done ranting, done caring.
Posted by: Elmo on October 19, 2005 10:51 AMDon't do that, because then the system has won, and then there is absolutely NO chance of change. The battle is worth it, even if you don't or can't win the war.
Posted by: psuedotsuga on October 19, 2005 11:25 AMThis is not unprecedented in our history. The colonists faced a similar problem confronting a corrupt tyrant. King George basically rigged the system so the colonists wouldn't have a fair chance at using the system to redress their grievances. Things just went on that way until the honest peoiple couldn't take it anymore, and the patriots started shooting at people on a bridge in Concord. I hope it doesn't come to that, but where to you go for protection under the law when the police are corrupt? Where do you go for justice when the courts are corrupt? Where do you go for a fair election when the electoral system is rigged against you?
Posted by: Interested Observer on October 19, 2005 12:35 PMOf course that rule never really made any sense since ballots put into machines at the polls were not examined first to look for unvoted or write in issues.
But somebody out there in vote-counting land apparently liked the idea that they could open up ballots and look at them two weeks before an election. (and re-write for weeks after the election as they do now.)
Later that rule metastasized into letting the election workers examine every ballot to determine whether there is a mis-marked ballot or a "ketchup" stain that would prevent the ballot from going thru the machine. etc. etc.
But this is the catch...unless there is a significant number of write-in's that might actually change the outcome of an election, the write-in's are never counted. The clear exception was that historic Linda Smith race, but such a thing virtually never happens. So, all those votes for Mickey Mouse and Attila the Hun end up sending your ballot to special scrutiny and some auditors may decide the ballot needs to be re-written....for whatever reason...there is such little consistency in treatment of ballots amoung the counties.
But there is no correlation recorded between number of ballots voted and number of votes counted in the races to include write-in's.
The US could sponsor research into processes and technolgy for elections. The system would have to cover all aspects of elections, from identification credentials, to registration, to voting, to vote counting. When a really good system is developed, the US could promote the system to governments both inside and outside the US. It would be very hard for any state to refuse to use the recommended system if it is in wide use and viewed as the gold standard. This takes the decisions out of the hands of local politicians, not by law but by political pressure. A local government would be severly condemned for using obviously inferior processes and technology instead of using the gold standard.
A common election system would have lots of benefits. It would have economies of scale. It would be standardized, so there would be many election service and product providers competing. There would be many government using the system, testing it, and helping make it better.
With today's technology, this shouldn't be that hard to develop. The real key is being able to market the "gold standard" solution and getting widespread adoption. This is something I could see the US doing, since so many countries, states, and counties appear to need help conduction non-fraudulent elections.
As far as fixing King County and the state of Washington, I'm certain that those in power now aren't going to do it. I'm also doubtful that if the Republicans got control, that they would fix everything. They don't want to rock the boat and be accused of voter intimidation - i.e. stopping non-citizens from voting.
Posted by: PW on October 19, 2005 01:12 PMAll I can say is that during the governor's race last year they had tallies down to the individual write in vote. More people voted write in for 'Ron Sims' than the margin of victory IIRC.
If your vote is not counted, you have grounds for a suit in my opinion (IANAL). If it were a mass movement, that makes it a class action suit. Because if they do as they have historically (leaving piles of absentees uncounted because they doubt they'll change the outcome), that is pretty irritating.
It just is _NOT_ this freaking tough to do. If they're going to hand the job of maintaining the sanctity of the vote off to 'we the people', then by golly we need to use FOIA requests, excessive challenges, and shenanigans like putting our own name on the ballot to do the job a anyone above the level 'poll worker' can do with a couple of clicks of their mouse.
But there's a lot more of us.
Posted by: Al on October 19, 2005 01:40 PMHow about real election reform?
No provisional ballots can be counted anytime anywhere. If you are not registered to vote you will be laughed out of polling place and told to get your dumb ass act together by the next election.
Who after all will stand up and declare that they are incapable of registering to vote? The fact that we have to swallow fraud and election theft to accommodate someone so careless and disrespectful of our democracy they refuse to take a half hour to register is just absurd.
No...The possibilities are much worse than that...
Imagine you voted absentee for Rossi, you checked the database and saw that your vote had indeed been counted.. You are satisfied that your Rossi vote was received and counted and you were credited for your vote......WHEN ACTUALLY...Your name was hijacked by a King County elections worker from your absentee return envelope. All entries were made into the system to make it appear that your vote was counted but the employee prepared a bogus ballot in your name for Gregoire and simply stuffed your envelope (with ballot still inside) into a box!
What if there were many of these unopen - yet *credited* absentee ballots? OOPS! There were! I wonder if it's possible to determine if other *unopened* absentee ballot voters were also credited with voting? What a scam! Just throw completed and returned absentee envelopes with their ballots into a box - credit the voter with voting and create what ever vote you want for them!
Whoa...This is much worse than I ever imagined!
In most counties, ballots are processed like an assembly line with different workers doing each stage. Batches of ballots travel in boxes of about 400 together.
Worker A: Checks the signatures and registrations on the outside envelope
Worker B: Removes the outside envelope to be stored separately
Worker C: Slits open the envelopes
Worker D: Removes each ballot and examines it for smudges, mis-markes, etc. and decides whether it should go into the pile for sending to the vote machines, or whether it needs to be rejected or re-written.
Worker E: Runs it through the machine.
Between step B and step D, there is an opportunity to replace entire boxes of unvoted ballots - destroy the originals- Worker B and Worker D never know that they didn't process the same ballots. Alternately, if the worker who slits open the ballots is part of the scam, then after the envelopes are split open- old ballots can be removed and pre-written stacks of new ones slipped into their envelopes- in a matter of minutes.
There is lots of down time at some of the election offices where there is no one present except the people who run the place.
Lucky for us, this can't happen since it would have to be an inside job, done at the highest level- and no politician running an election office would rig an election just to keep their friends in power.
Posted by: cur on October 20, 2005 07:24 AM