Also, it should be noted that many Republicans were talking about opting to use the drop off station on election day, in protest of the forced mail voting. My husband and I did this as well. Our ballots have not been received yet, according to the confirmation feature on the Snohomish Co. auditor site.

Quite simple.

Oh, and I sometimes wonder how much KC might speed up, especially when close statewide races are involved, if we had a law prohibiting the SecState and county auditors from releases any results for which final vote counts had not yet been turned in. (Yes, I realize this might delay releasing results for weeks in some cases, with WA's rules-ballot mailed on or before election day, as opposed to received by-and the significant numbers of overseas military voters. Tough.)

Of course, in King County, you could probably get away with turning all three ballots in separately with your well-planned-out votes for each party selected. Naturally any Republican votes would have been discarded as a "mistake" or fraud and the "legit" democrat votes counted by Sims volunteers as the "intent of the voters".

Behold, the liberal government at its finest.

So much for all mail balloting being better.

Yes, it is the voter's fault. It's the fault of the voters in 2004 who voted for King Ron.

There are some counties that are clearly near finishing, if not finished - Lincoln (67%), Garfield (63%), Columbia (60%). While I think that something is up at the KingCo office, I will note that there is a clear correlation between smaller county size and turnout at this point.

KingCo is neither the only nor the worst offender here. It's 18% on 2004. Island, on the other hand, is only 15%. Lewis is also just below King.

None of the big counties look done - Clark at 35%, Kitsap at 34%, Pierce at 31%, Spokane at 35%. They're all above the state average, but unless turnout is remarkably low, King County seems to be more a symptom of a statewide problem than the problem itself.

I'll also note that King County posted an update at 3 AM the first night. They pulled an all-nighter, apparently. Isn't that lovely to imagine - people who have been up for 24 hours counting ballots intricately?

Fools. Access is well known in the Sys Admin community as a toy. You sure don't find Access used for truly mission critical large scale database deployments in the real world. Or at least not without constant hand holding from Microsoft and careful disection of the DB into smaller workable pieces that Access can handle. But in so doing, that also increases overall System Administration workload in terms of database management, backup, more hardware maintenance, etc.

To me it appears that the largest deficiency at KCREALS is a lack of good operational IT knowledge. To be fair, this is common in both the public and privte sector, but given the hyper intense scrutiny that Sims and KCREALS have been under since 2004, this should have been addressed long ago. Two years is more than ample time to right the ship under competent leadership, so the core problem is just BAD MANAGEMENT.

Leading local newspapers and television stations should be calling for Sims to step down and for an emergency operational review and replacement of the entire KCREALS management team.

Absolutely. The problem is that elections have moved into the 21st century, and nearly everywhere, it is still being addressed as a 20th century problem. In obtaining 2004 precinct results, I contacted a lot of counties. Many of them said they were still using 1980s software to tabulate and store election results. None of the staffers seemed remotely friendly with the technology, with very few exceptions.

On that, I think King County gets a bit of a bad rap. Smaller counties can get away with using outmoded systems. Garfield County has 1/725th of King County's population. They could use an abacus and get the results in before KC.

That doesn't make King County's attitude acceptable. But it isn't at all uncommon. KC should be held up to a higher standard, especially in management, but I have not seen any real indication that the thinking process when it comes to IT is any different in the other counties. I would like to see what kind of infrastructure they have.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.......or just rigged elections.

And no, Jeffro, I didn't know about that lawsuit. The rules are the rules, and for some reason Dems never want to follow the rules. I learned of the mark-a-party rule and accept it. If I forget to mark it, that's my own darn fault. And if I intentionally choose to not mark it (as some surely did), then I fully expect my vote not be to counted anyway. If rules for the game are not enforced (and we know that they already haven't been in so many cases with KCE, then we have absolutely nothing. Except a dictatorship.

And no, Jeffro, I didn't know about that lawsuit. The rules are the rules, and for some reason Dems never want to follow the rules. I learned of the mark-a-party rule and accept it. If I forget to mark it, that's my own darn fault. And if I intentionally choose to not mark it (as some surely did), then I fully expect my vote not be to counted anyway. If rules for the game are not enforced (and we know that they already haven't been in so many cases with KCE, then we have absolutely nothing. Except a dictatorship.

An excellent concept where the powers to be have morals and scruples. Providing extra ballots in Dr. MLK County would be like giving five year old kids loaded guns. It's frightening to think about extra ballots floating around. Sims and crew do enough damage with the ballots they now get their hands on.

Heard it on the morning news. Wait and see, the dems will count all even without party designation. I know plenty of people who didn't fill it out as a protest. I myself am in favor of the caucus (sp) system. But at leaast this isn't as bad as the top two system. Sorry- a bit off topic.

Let me say that elections in KC are FUBaR and I have lost ALL confidence in the process. I'll continue to vote, but I have no doubt that they are tracking the republican voters and disqualitying them for the smallest mis mark and allowing and devining the democrat voters ballots.

I believe in psych circles that's called "projection"....

(From my dad, who is a rabidly militant leftist Democrat PCO who recently asked me about weapons for home defense because he was concerned about "right wing death squads")

everyone keeps giving this liar Ron & his foibles a pass; fools all; too p.c.--i'd REALLY like to kick those lib voters in the collective arse for re-electing him--THEY are to blame--they are either apathetic, purposely peckerheads or lemmmings with a self-destructive wish for all taxpayers, landowners and small businesses;

when KC takes your land & restricts it for GMO or environnment, it can count boundaries as accurate as a spy sattlite; but counting a simple damn vote accurately or designing a system for same in 2006, it's like the freakin middle ages;

we deserve this--he's still there, so what can one say...

Voting results and ballot return numbers for the September 19, 2006 Primary Election
These numbers are UNOFFICIAL until final election certification.
Updated as of September 20th, 5:00 p.m.
Number of ballots issued: 337,393
Number of ballots returned to date: 79,269 -- Approximately 23.50% voter turnout -- Approximately 39,000 ballots left to count
Next vote total update: Sept 21, 2006, at approximately 5:00 PM
Last Updated: September 20, 2006 5:00 PM

http://www.co.snohomish.wa.us/auditor/Elections/ecurrent.htm

If the so-called leadership at King County had a clue how to plan, negotiate, manage and otherwise run a business, they would have either pressured Diebold convert their lousy program to something that works or found another way to get the job done.

Mr. Sims should be our target--the buck stops with him and nobody else. He insists on appointing inept managers, he should jolly well be held accountable for their incompetence.

A week after the primary election was plagued by human error and technical glitches, Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) called yesterday for the state to scrap its $106 million electronic voting apparatus and revert to a paper ballot system for the November election.

"When in doubt, go paper, go low-tech," he said.

Maybe KC can learn something.

i can't imagine they could do any worse--and--double win--they get class credits and we get a count done by kids with ideals and hard work, not apathetic, politically-oriented clerks.