I've been following the continued race for Goobernor in Washington, and while usually they're about as wild eyed a group as the people who send Michelle Malkin hate mail, the folks at SoundPolitics are keeping a thumb on King County and regularly handing free leads to the step-behind Seattle media. But being a little wild-eyed, they're prone to getting out the Jump to Conclusions mat, usually involving the words "fraud" and "disenfranchisement." Joe O'Donnell, the same Republican college student observing the King County elections, thought he'd try to check to see when the military ballots were sent out, working on Dean Rossi's theme that vast numbers of deployed Washington military personnel were shafted on their right to vote. Well, that little site buzzed with excitement. The Smoking Gun!
Yes, well, not to be. Carla at Preemptive Karma has done quite a bit of useful research on military ballot mailing and procedures, and based on her comments at SP, tipped the Seattle Times' Keith Ervin.It took over a day, but the grudging notice correction did appear at SP some hours after the MSM had it, so OK, apology accepted.
So no sooner do I cut them a break, when I see the update to their latest breathless story: King County failed to admit that their supposedly "similar" 1,200-vote discrepancy in 2000 between ballots and signed-in voters was actually more VOTERS than ballots. That's it, they're busted! Except they're back on the air a few hours later with Part Deux: Whoops, my mistake. It was in fact more ballots than voters, like 2004. And with 100,000 fewer votes to track.
Anyhow, keep an eye in both places if you want to catch up.
--TJ
Comments