April 06, 2006
Deanron releases transaction logs
King County Elections made the long-awaited transaction logs available to me yesterday -- six months and a week after I first requested them.
I'm still going through the data and won't have much to report just yet, but one thing's for certain -- they gave me some files in December and claimed it was all the records that were responsive to my request. But now I know that they withheld at least half of what they should have given me at that time.
More later.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at April 06, 2006
12:52 PM | Email This
1. Really - I'm floored! KC would do that? Never!
2. Are you suggesting that it's taken Deanron half a year to sanitize those transaction logs?
3. Every single time this happens you should press on until they have to pay the per-record damages for the delay.
4. The transaction logs in question have actually been in existence since roughly December 2004.
They were continually updated as the Democratically-controlled vote-counting and crediting and canvassing process did its murky deeds. Threats to King County Elections peace of mind came from the Chelan County trial, and from the unforseeably acute delving of one Stefan Sharkansky into their process. Apparently the local MSM presented no such threats during their minimalist 'reporting' of the election challenge.
So if any tinkering of data has occurred, I'd suggest that the County minions have had more than a year to accomplish it.
5. 1 Keep the pressure on King County Elections to provide the data in a timely matter
2 Disclose both good & bad on KCE
3 Looks like you are having the same difficulty w/ Pierce and Snohomish
4 If the delays are not reasonable, file to collect fines and penalties
5 Will you discuss this on KUOW this morning
6. Hey is Sound Politics going to do any work opposing the move to absentee ballots? I saw Shark at the meeting... and am hoping this means there will be people opposing this?
7. Stefan said:
"... they gave me some files in December and claimed it was all the records that were responsive to my request. But now I know that they withheld at least half of what they should have given me at that time." This is exactly what I went through in the first four years of first requesting, then suing, Ron Sims and King County to get all the sports stadium economic studies (there were nearly 20) and related documents they had. On something like over 10 different occasions, they told me and my lawyers what Stefan just related above - these are all the documents now. Then we'd look at them and know there had to be more. And we'd tell them so. And they'd agree and provide yet more documents saying: "you were right, we had more documents, here they are, and that's all of them now". This was repeated many times but I still don't have all the documents. It seems like King County is still playing the same game. And why not? They weren't fined enough by the courts, and there is no incentive to not continue to withhold. Any number of public officials, including Rob McKenna, have publicly said so - that the reimbursement of legal costs and the fines in my case - and the seven years and $382K in costs incurred to win what I did in court - are no deterrent to King County doing it again. That's why I recently appealed again and hope for stiffer daily fines to be awarded in the second appeal. Otherwise, this conduct will continue. There is no other way to stop it unless the parties responsible pay the fines - and that is unlikely to ever become the law.
8. Shark,
Which of the revised sets of documents did they give you?
9. So if any tinkering of data has occurred, I'd suggest that the County minions have had more than a year to accomplish it.
Posted by Hank Bradley at April 6, 2006 05:08 PM
Hank--
The great thing here is the "tinkers" are actually quite stupid. We can only hope they have "tinkered"!