1. In a word- "effing" crooks!

Posted by: John425 on October 6, 2006 01:25 PM

2. I think we might be living in Bizzaro world. A place where homelessness is a lifestyle choice, the best options are always the MOST expensive options, and 92,992 = 92,930.

Posted by: Nate on October 6, 2006 01:26 PM

3. There's a reason these people work for King County. They're too incompetent to work in the real world where an error like this would not be tolerated.

Posted by: Bill Cruchon on October 6, 2006 01:40 PM

4. Wow, what happened????

Posted by: Michele on October 6, 2006 01:43 PM

5. The simplest of accounting error checking devices would fix this type of crap.

Count the total # of ballots.

Count the votes in race number 1, votes for candidate A + candidate b + under vote + over vote = number of ballots.

Wash, rinse and repeat for each race.

Count cannot be reconciled until number of total votes in each race and the number of ballots is the same.

Another reason for mandatory poll place voting. A further check the number of voters signing the poll book equals the number of ballots in a precinct.

Mail in leaves an opening for twiddling the total number of ballots.

It is simple counting, and a basic cross check of totals in various categories to the grand total would catch a lot of errors.

KCE obviously is complete clueless.

Posted by: JCM on October 6, 2006 03:10 PM

6. The number ought to be 63, since one extra ballot was introduced after the fact: during the recount, the number of ballots at one polling place was insufficient, so they looked through the supplies in the warehouse and found some ballots that were included in the "spoiled" ballots but should not have been (although they had been torn by poll workers). When the Canvassing Board allowed those ballots to be added during the recount, they were aware that doing so would add one extra ballot to the count.
Of the 63 ballots not found, 13 were determined to have been ballots in the initial count that had been counted multiple times during tabulation, and ought to have been counted once. Therefore, somewhere out there, either 50 ballots were lost in the process, they were doubly counted in the first place, or some combination of the two.

Posted by: Tim B. on October 6, 2006 03:26 PM

7. I see King County is keeping up the tradition of not being able to accurately determine close races. Bank Envy.

Posted by: Jeff B. on October 6, 2006 03:32 PM

8. Richard Pope,

I'm not sure if you are allowed to comment on the counts and this issue, but if you can....will you?

I would expect that this is disturbing to you, though you did "win". However, in the next so-called-counting of ballots in November....who knows?

Posted by: Dengle on October 6, 2006 04:18 PM

9. JCM: Such cross-checking is simple and obvious, and is done in most other fields, and yet it often isn't done in elections. It's not just a King County phenomenon--in Florida, one of the counties lost a fair number of votes on a recount because only ballots inserted in one direction were counted; a count of ballots vs. voters would have revealed this immediately.

Ballot-count crosschecks are hardly rocket science. Why do election officials seem to find them so impossible?

Posted by: supercat on October 6, 2006 04:21 PM

10. JCM: addendum:

I'd add one more figure to the stats: the number of as-yet-uncounted ballots. I'd also clarify that the "overvotes" category includes all non-blank spoiled ballots, and all things that ever seemed to be ballots in the initial count. Thus, one would be able to reconcile the ballot count even before the ballots had been examined to see what votes they contained.

Posted by: supercat on October 6, 2006 04:26 PM

11. A reasonable person would think King Kounty would go the extra mile to make sure these 2 counts reconciled...or to explain the difference BEFORE all of us Bright Bulbs @ SP get to start chewin' on it.
But remember folks....King Kounty is doing the very best they can!

Posted by: Mr. Cynical on October 6, 2006 04:40 PM

12. Do they know if they received more ballots that they sent out? :-)

A number I would like to know is, how many mailled ballots didn't return. what percentage of the total that is. They tought how mail voting is easier and that's what people want, but if people are getting them and not voting, then I don't think its a good thing.

Posted by: Dengle on October 6, 2006 04:41 PM

13. Well, it does seem odd that the number of ballots could be reduced without explanation. I don't know whether this happened in the 17 Snohomish County precincts. The 62 ballots were "lost" somewhere in the 660 King County precincts.

Interesting that I lost 2 votes, LaSalata lost 21 votes, and Ottinger lost 17 votes. Why would they lose the other folks' ballots, and not mine?

Posted by: Richard Pope on October 6, 2006 05:16 PM

14. Thanks for commenting.

As for why.....KingRon must like you. :-)

Posted by: Dengle on October 6, 2006 05:18 PM

15. Hey Richard--
I am afraid there is a vast LEFT-WING conspiracy at play here.
They figure if they elect you Judge, you will have to stop Blogging...thus stop busting those loser Leftists on their BS.
If you win====you are a Judge
If you lose===you keep kicking their asses!
You win either way.
Good luck Richard.

Posted by: Mr. Cynical on October 6, 2006 05:59 PM

16. I know King County is corrupt. I know they manipulate the ballot counts.

So......I encourage everyone to vote! Hey - We can at least make it a long and tedious task for them in their after election ballot manipulation!

Then we should all flood KC elections with phone calls the day after the election with inquiries/complaints about why it is taking them so long to count the ballots! We can also call the media to report the KC election count delay.....(over and over and over again...)

If you can't beat 'em....stress 'em out! ;)

Posted by: Deborah on October 6, 2006 06:51 PM

17. i'm sure chimpanzees likewise do the best they can in life. why are reading about yet another screwed-up count? after all the issues in '04?
62--hmmm--any numerologists out there to hire as blue ribbon panel consultants to figure out why '62' is significant? i'll get my tea leaves.

Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on October 6, 2006 07:50 PM

18. Bank associate to Ron Sims:
"Sorry, Sir--we can't account for 62 of your credit card transactions."

"Is that a problem?"

"Would you like to speak with my Manager?"

Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on October 6, 2006 08:31 PM

19. I have an idea, King Ron's bank should subtract $62 from his account every time his bank statement is generated.

After all, KCRE has an accuracy that any bank would envy.

OK, King Ron, self appointed monarch, please deduct $62 from your bank account every statement, since that's a record you envy.

Posted by: Obi-Wan on October 6, 2006 09:00 PM

20. Here's how it works in Cook--I mean King--County:

Landslide vote tallies are left alone. Whether an R or D prevails doesn't matter; with the advent of sites like SP, it's too risky to meddle with.

Close tallies, however, are another matter. Mysteriously, the counting of ballots is slowed "to make sure mistakes aren't made." In reality, the winner is already known; this is a merely a delay tactic to allow the Sims machine to 1) decide who should win, and 2) produce or lose the necessary ballots.

If instead of winning the most votes, Pope was within a few hundred votes of Ottinger to decide who would face LaSalata, with Pope's recent action you can rest assured that a call from the governor's mansion would have made sure Ottinger prevailed.

Posted by: Organization Man on October 6, 2006 09:21 PM

21. now us right wing nuts have something to chant (as we take off work a full day) on the city hall steps:
"hey hey. hoo hoo. 62 smells like poo."
and i need to hire that 'inside job' sign making halloween lady in the other post below!

Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on October 8, 2006 09:07 AM

22. Stefan,
1. What precincts did the extra ballots show up in?
2. Were the extra ballots in those precincts absentee or poll votes?
3. As per conversation with TB, this is an issue of 'the net' drop in ballots. A net drop of 50 could be 100 precincts dropping 1, and 50 precinct's adding one.
This Add and Drop within a set of precincts is a vector for fraud.
4. What is the name of the king county employee who touched those particular precincts?
The absence of this data for [4] is another vector for fraud. The presence of a report of this nature would take an open-loop process and make it closed-loop process where we could have error detection and correction.

For 2004, we do not 'yet' have a consolidated report on the precincts counted 3, 4, 5, 6, and yes that final Tuesday morning, the 7th time for some precincts on the +/- 1 history over the sequence of counts per precinct (abs or poll).

We do not yet have a consolidated report showing mis-sorts causing Precinct A to go down by one 'piece of paper' when the mis-sort was removed and precinct B going up by one 'piece of
paper' when it arrived at its correct precinct.
This would tighten up the process considerably by isolating error, and raise the bar for anyone considering fraud.

Where is token evidence that they are concerned about the process?
G.

Posted by: gregg on October 8, 2006 07:49 PM

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