I found a curious thing today. Over at SoundPolitics.com, the leading mouthpiece for a Washington state revote, The Kids are Alright about a Seattle Times piece that positively IDed over 100 votes by ineligible felons. Evidently, in SP's general view the presence of potentially scores of felon votes (those 100+ were just King and Pierce Counties) is clear sign of neglect by election officials. How Could They Let This Happen?, in other words. Lacking hard evidence of either intentional misconduct or identified illegal votes for Gregoire, Rossi revote supporters are advancing the Chaos Was Afoot strategy, hoping that the ever mounting drizzle of screwups by county boards will make the justices throw up their hands and say, "Aye Caramba! This election, she cannot stand!"
There's a slight problem with that theory. As far as the Times can tell, it's not the fault of the counties:
Because courts and election officials don't use a common identifier, such as a driver's license or Social Security number, they're often forced into a bit of a guessing game. They have to look for matches using a mix of names, addresses and birth dates. The process gets especially tricky for people with common names or when family members with similar names live at the same address.
Another problem is that counties don't get a statewide list of convicted felons, so if a criminal is convicted in a county other than where he votes, election officials may not know.
Even when a felon is removed from the rolls, in most Washington counties it's simple to get back on. All the felon has to do is register again.
(snip)
The Times surveyed 21 of Washington's 39 counties about their procedures for tracking felons, and in most of those counties, officials don't check new registrants against other records.
Dean Logan, director of elections in King County, said, "I don't think it's the responsibility of the election administrators to essentially do background checks on registered voters."
Pat McCarthy, Pierce County auditor, said that wouldn't even be possible: "We don't have the capacity to do that, and that's true of every county in the state," she said.
So they don't get a directly comparable list from the state, they don't get a statewide list, and they can't prevent reregistration because they don't have the capacity to check. And this, somehow, is Dean Logan's fault.
The system looks like it needs major upgrades in data tracking and accountability--probably every state except Oregon needs it badly, and that's what many people have been saying since 2000. And there's no doubt that King officials (and some others) have plenty to answer for when questioned about their apparent nonchalance to warnings about their procedures.
But taking the problems with felon voters out of the hands of the election boards, and putting the blame mostly in the hands of the courts and general administrative systems, takes an enormous amount of starch out of Rossi's main contention: that the election was abnormally flawed, and that a revote can solve the problem.
First of all, if the problem is systemic to the way the state handles its felon data and transmits them to county boards, then Goobernor 2004 becomes normally flawed--that is, given the design of the procedures, you would expect this to happen for every election using that system.
Why the revote won't solve the problem, is based on factors involving procedural flaws rather than implementational ones: if felon votes were likely to happen by design in the last election, they're going to happen in the next one too.
When places like Pierce and Snohomish are named as other counties with some of the same problems as King, I don't see that working in Rossi's favor, either. It may lend weight to the idea that the problems were widespread, but again, widespread problems suggest a systemic administrative failure, not an abnormal electoral failure. Further, they also undercut any possible Rossi attempt to assume vote apportionment to show Gregoire disproportionally benefitted from the problems. Pierce and Snohomish are both counties that went fairly strongly for Rossi--like most counties in the state. Every bit of evidence that comes up from counties besides King says two things to me if I'm a judge (which, last I checked, I am not):
- The problems are not King problems, they are election problems.
- If the problems are occuring in both Gregoire counties and Rossi counties, then the effects of the problems may be assumed to tend to balance out overall--ie, some problems will benefit Rossi, some Gregoire.
Rossi is banking on making a case for pretty much the opposite: liberal King messed it up for all the good Rossi counties, and therefore any problems point to a Gregoire advantage.
--TJ
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