Fisking Sharkansky

[jointly researched and published at AlsoAlso and Preemptive Karma]

Since the election contest in Washington appears to be moving forward to the trial phase, we felt it was important to understand the evidence being proffered by the Republicans to have the election set aside. The prime Republican target for allegations of misconduct has been King County. King is the largest county in the state and has become a lightning rod for Rossi, the state Republican Party (led by the obstreperous Chris Vance) and the rightwing talk/blog echo chamber, led on this issue by Stefan Sharkansky and SoundPolitics.com.

We want to be clear: King County has made some mistakes in this election. Perhaps the most glaring is the one SoundPolitics has dropped from their radar: the 723 ballots initially rejected for not having signatures on file in the computer when they knew that some signatures weren’t yet in the computer. In our opinion, the rejection of valid votes is always worse than the acceptance of invalid votes, unless the result of official fraud.

But where Democrats in a place like Ohio were frustrated by attempts to gain more information from election officials, we have found election officials in Washington to be generally open, helpful and dedicated. Surpisingly this has remained true even in the face of a vitriolic echo chamber and a heavy burden placed on them by the contest litigants.

These experiences are what gives us such a dim view of the way Sharkansky and SP have gone about their campaign. Too often, the charges have been leveled in a careless manner. Unfortunately, what's emerged is a pattern of discovery and accusation, then publication and THEN perhaps checking to see whether the story's right. Corrections are often made grudgingly and fleetingly.

The most visible mistake was asking the postal service about bulk mailing of military overseas ballots, and not asking about the right bulk mail license. With a minimum of fact checking, Carla was able to suss that one out and defuse the allegations. It's not just election stories, either--this week an associate was incredulous that state laws regarding art set-asides on building projects, would cause an unholy 16mil to be spent on art in front of a sewage plant. Apparently no one asked the development team until later, when it was discovered that the set-aside is not calculated on the total development cost, as SP had blithely assumed. SP corrected their error, but not until well after their article ran.

So when Sharkansky declared with typical hyperbole that he was compiling the "definitive" analysis of King County's votes, we were interested but skeptical.

Sharkansky acquired the public records that were available on the county's results and voter rolls, compared them, and concluded that contrary to King's assertion of around 2,100 anomalies, the total number was actually more than 3,700.  Wow! “County Underestimates, Hides Vote Discrepancy 70% Bigger Than Initial Report!” Get Brit Hume on the horn!

Sharkansky's prime contention was that the 2,100 figure represented only a net discrepancy: voters without ballots and separate ballots without voters were allowed to cancel each other out, rather than counting as two separate errors instead of zero.  That's a valid charge, if proven. An unmatched vote is an unmatched vote. But the devil is definitely in the details, and that's where it would have helped to pursue some extra knowledge about trying to replicate the county's totals.  (Hopefully ignorance is the excuse, anyway).

The two vital pieces in reconciling the books are the voter list, and the tally of cast ballots. Ballot tallies are easy enough to compile, we did it as easily as Sharkansky or anyone else can, by downloading data files available at the County site. King County released a list of registered voters as of Nov 1. The next two releases were lists of voters credited with voting (December 30 and January 7). Both were preliminary but successively refined lists.

There are over 2600 individual precincts in King County. Most polling places serve multiple precincts. Cast your ballot at the wrong table and you'll be misfiled.  King County recorded less than one discrepancy per precinct, according to their figures.  Another avenue to error is the fact that the publicly released manual recount figures are not broken down by ballot type (polls, absentee, provisionals, etc.) Rather blithely, Sharkansky reconciles the problem this way: "I used the counts of each type of ballot per precinct from the machine recount, but the precinct total from the manual recount, realizing that the totals would still be off by 1 or 2 in some precincts." Say, arbitrarily, it's _at least_ one in a quarter of the precincts. That's a variance of around 650 that is created not by King, but by Sharkanksy's attempts to fact-check King. 

By Sharkansky’s own admissions, he struggled to create a file that he believed would match what King worked with to reconcile their data. But his struggle was futile from the start, which he must have known: King didn’t reconcile their data at the precinct level, they did it voter by voter, pollbook line by pollbook line. How can you claim you’ve done the definitive analysis, when you don’t even have the right file defined? We don’t think you can.

In the next piece, we’ll talk more about King’s electoral process, and see whether their performance is out of step with the rest of the state.

--TJ and Carla

Comments

[Micajah]

Here's a quote from the 1912 case you were interested in:

"By the statute, poll lists are required to be kept by the election officers, and the returns of the election should show a name of an elector for each ballot in the ballot box."

Granting that "the shark" doesn't have access to the actual poll books and absentee ballot envelopes which have the voters' signatures on them, I note that King County does have access to its own election materials and records -- yet King County cannot find enough voters' signatures to go with the number of ballots supposedly submitted by those voters.

There does indeed need to be a precinct by precinct reconciliation of signatures and ballots. It needed to be done on election night for polling places and prior to certifying the election returns in all cases -- just as the August 2004 regulations issued by the SecState required.

But King County didn't follow the law. They waited until long after certifying their returns and then said "whoops, we seem to be short a few signatures or perhaps we gave out a few thousand ballots to people who didn't sign the books, or maybe -- well, we don't know but we'll get back to you."

The fact that King County -- working from the poll books and absentee ballot signature envelopes as their source documents -- cannot come close in matching the number of ballots on which they counted the votes to the number of voters who purportedly cast those ballots demonstrates that a precinct by precinct reconciliation effort would reveal the presence of invalid, illegitimate ballots. Once the reconciliation is done at the precinct level, we will know whether there were ballots stuffed into the count at a few precincts or a lot of precincts.

Or, maybe we'll find that the irregularity didn't occur at the precinct level. Maybe those "voterless ballots" were inserted into the count at the counting center.

Until that precinct by precinct reconciliation is done, we will only know what Sharkansky has pointed out -- there are too many ballots on which the votes have been counted, and King County cannot explain how those ballots got into the vote count.

[Torridjoe]

Micajah, do you have the cite on the 1912 case?

On reconciliation: it's not logisitically possible to have a one-to-one reconciliation on Election Night in King; there are simply too many votes. And it was not possible shortly thereafter in this case anyway, since polling materials were locked down as soon as the initial tabulation statewide triggered the first recount. They stayed locked down until the manual recount was certified.

Further, if you are correct in your phrasing, a reconciliation by polling place is NOT the same as one by precinct, considering that 90% of all polling places in King serve more than one precinct, almost half serving five or more.

Note that while a reconciliation is required, balancing is not. "Explanations" are required as to why they are not zeroed, a fungible statement--given that if you knew why you had a discrepancy, you wouldn't really have one anymore in many cases.

Further still, King is by no means alone in their failure to reach a zero-balance. Only counties with relatively few voters (none over 30,000 among those we've surveyed) were able to reach perfect accounting. Neither is King's discrepancy out of order with their previously reported discrepancy in 2000. Neither is it the highest error rate in the state; currently it would appear Spokane holds that honor.

The connection you make between failure to identify and "invalid, illegitmate ballots" is entirely unsupported. There is no reason to suspect they are invalid (beyond the 96 still-unverified provisionals, and of course they are identified as part of the total and thus not unknown per se), and of course as far as the law is concerned they are all presumed to be valid, as Bridges appeared to note.

When you say "when that precinct by precinct reconciliation is done"--who is doing that, Stefan? Does he have people down at King going line by line through the pollbooks? That's the only way to do it. And according to Huennekens, they are not pursuing further reconciliation at this time. And what Stefan has pointed out--that King has 3,700 for its discrepancy--is not based on a proper tally of the votes.

Your implication is that ballots were mysteriously cast, rather than the far simpler and more obvious explanation that voter credits do not match in sufficient numbers.

[Micajah]

Torridjoe: Here’s the URL for the Hill opinion.
http://www.mrsc.org/nxt/gateway.dll/wareports/wareportsstate/070washreport/070washreport0603.htm

You make what is probably a valid point about the reconciliation at polling places on election night versus precinct by precinct. I don't know if they use separate ballot boxes for each precinct that shares a polling place. (I think there are two precincts that use the polling place where I vote, and I don't recall seeing more than one ballot box.)

The precinct workers are required to complete a ballot reconciliation form to reconcile the number of ballots issued and the number of ballots in the box before they seal the ballots into the transport container to be taken to the counting center or auditor's office upon the closing of the polls.

I'm not sure as a practical matter how they can do that reconciliation without sorting the ballots by precinct. One step in the reconciliation process is to count the signatures in the poll book and compare that to the ballot number.

However the practical steps are worked out, my point is that common sense and the law both require a precinct by precinct reconciliation of signatures and ballots. There is no other way to know whether there are ballots of questionable validity that have somehow been put into the ballot box, transport container, or tray at the counting center.

Focusing only on the "front end" with security measures intended to make it difficult to get a ballot without authority, cast a ballot without being eligible to vote, or cast more than one ballot is an invitation to disaster. One might find that after certifying the election returns there are a few thousand ballots of questionable validity which are discovered to be among those on which the votes were counted.

Surprises like that have to be avoided, and the only practical way to avoid them is to reconcile signatures and ballots -- and have a "real time" record of who has already had one ballot accepted, so that later ballots from the same person won't be accepted. (I am relatively certain that the counties where the "voterless ballots" appear to exist in significant numbers had no such "real time" record which their workers could have used to weed out the second, third or thirtieth absentee ballots cast by any voter. I've read my own county's instructions, so I know they didn't.)

When I say that the reconciliation would show where the problems occurred, I mean a reconciliation done as part of the resolution of the election contest.

As you've noted, King County might have had only one improperly cast "voterless ballot" per precinct -- but, as I'm noting, no one can know whether the problem was spread so thinly among all precincts or concentrated in a few precincts where some substantial neglect or improper conduct caused a lot of illegitimate ballots to get into the count. Indeed, until the reconcilation is done and compared to the certified precinct returns, we cannot even know whether illegitimate ballots were put into the stacks or trays at the counting centers, rather than at the polling places.

Without going to those source documents and doing now what should have been done before certifying the returns, we can only speculate.

The point of an election contest is to get beyond speculation by examining the available evidence.

[Torrid]

Thanks for the comment and the URL again, but it must be Firefox. I can't see it from home, either.

Anyway--I believe each precinct has a separate polling book, but I don't know from there. They count them by precinct, so they must keep them that way.

I have to say, one of things I did not ask either Huennekens or Egan is whether or not they conducted an election night count, and how that went if so. They reconciled by scanning a wand over every line in the pollbook that had a signature (human process), then scanning the barcode on the absentees (human process). From there they assembled a list of credited voters, and then I assume stripped the courtesy credits from the late absentees and the rejected provisionals. Whether they then took that list and reconciled it by precinct, I can't say. This administrative law was passed in August, but IIRC Snohomish claims they never heard about it. How many counties can it be said of, who performed a precinct reconciliation that night, before lockdown (because after lockdown, forget it)? And of that group, how many had 30,000 ballots or fewer? Spokane had 976 more voters than ballots. Did they reconcile election night? I shame myself to say I didn't ask them, either.

One thing I am clear on, is that there is no specific penalty laid out for not doing it, and there is nothing other than "explanation" required for discrepancies. King has offered me and the public several explanations as a generality.

Does it have a possible impact on the contest? Maybe so. But I warn you, several times you referred to the illegitmacy of votes and improper conduct or neglect, as far as I know without any basis. Your natural conclusion seems to be that a discrepancy represents fraud, which I think is of great dispute. Both legally and on a common sense basis, the presumption is that these are honest mistakes. Because of the primacy of secrecy and the fact that volunteers run the damn thing, perfect accounting of hand-written processes is a goal, not a reality. And if we rue the reality we've created for our elections, then we have a larger issue (which I think we do). But the remedy doesn't start during a court trial for the last election. It should be starting in the legislature next session, which I think it will.

I don't think King plans on doing any more reconciliation, for the contest or otherwise. They're at 1,896, and I think they're satisfied with .21% error this election.

[chew2]

TJ and Carla,

I have never understood the mechanics of how and why the alleged unaccounted for overvotes could occur, and what the causes might be. Nor do I understand the procedure followed to attempt to reconcile the votes cast with those registered. And I'm still confused. But I do have an unrelated question.

What is the basis for claiming that in King county there were some 350 provisional ballots improperly deposited in the ballot boxes. On what specific evidence was this number derived. Is there any evidence other than the one reported statement by that election offical whose name escapes me.

[Torridjoe]

Thanks for the comment, chew. There are any number of ways a discrepancy can arise, because it is such a human-driven process. As a first example, KC estimates nearly 100 names were improperly left off the pollbook lists when they were printed, because there were typos that prevented the records from being included. Other errors include the voter's having moved during the election/counting period, a failure to properly wand-scan the barcodes on each line in the pollbook with a proper signature (and all the errors that creates, like reading the wrong line, missing valid lines, etc), not properly crediting voters in the file when their votes are provisional but finally verified, etc.

King County admits to 348 provisional ballots fed into the tabulating machines before their validity could be addressed. Essentially they got the number by comparing their empty provisional envelopes, and/or notations in the pollbooks that they voted provisionally, but the ballot was not on hand to verify with the others. Since then, they claim to have validated 252 of them, leaving 96 they are unsure about. Not all may be invalid (the current validity rate is somewhat lower than the 87% rate for all provisionals), but it's possible they are.

[Rick Schaut]

Joe,

It might help to remember that the voter registration database, which is updated based on the signatures in the pollbooks, is nothing more than an electronic database. On average, databases tend to have about a 5% error rate (you can look that up on the web). If King Co. is unable to reconcile even 4000 votes out of nearly 900,000, their error rate is still well bellow the average for databases.

By the way, the fact that it is virtually impossible to maintain an error-free database of registered voters is the very reason why security and validation in the election process is front-loaded.

[north clark county]

I have to say that on this issue, I tend to agree more with TJ's conclusions, while agreeing with Micajah's requirements.

I'll add my observations from Clark County. We had three precincts at one polling place and one ballot box (and we're still using punch cards). Each precinct gets a different ballot, but they are co-mingled in the ballot box. The counting computer knows from the coding on the card to which precinct the ballot belongs, and can sort them appropriately.

The precinct reconciliations would have to be done between the ballots issued and the signatures obtained, after adjusting for spoiled ballots. I do not believe poll workers have access to ballots once they are deposited into the ballot box. The box is locked and is transported to the elections office under security before opening.

The biggest problem with attributing ballots in excess to voters is that it is too easily assigned to clerical error, as TJ has demonstrated. I'm sure that election workers would make even more convincing arguments to the judge than TJ has. The only traction that the Rs might get from this would be if almost all of it occurred in one precinct. Sharkansky hasn't shown this to close to true. He uses the term "distributed vote fraud", which, if it were true, makes it harder to prove. The more distributed the fraud, the harder to put the pieces together into a provable case. It's kind of like "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that someone's not following you." But try watching a paranoid prove that he's being followed in court.

Our auditor recognizes the Rossi claim of "every ballot should have a voter" as being great politics. But he also recognizes that is a poor accusation in court.

[Mac Diva]

Sharkansky does not have the tools to do accurate analysis of the election. However, I do not believe that is his purpose anyway. An unethical person can create attention for himself by blatantly publishing misinformation and disinformation on a topic of public interest. That is Sharkansky' goal, and he has succeeded at it. However, he would not have succeeded if some people in the blogosphere and the media were not so gullible. People need to stop and ask if the stories he tells make sense. They'll see that they usually don't. Often the giveaway is obvious. For example, if one reads and comprehends the tale about dead people voting that circulated so widely on Right Wing blogs, what an objective person sees is that a few unsophisticated, grieving people thought they could vote their dead spouses' ballots.

I am still looking for support for a claim made about felons voting by a person who said he was a lawyer for builders in Washington in early January. I have not been able to find anything since the 7th or 8th of last month, despite the fellow's claim he would produce a list of 50 or more felon voters. Has anyone else heard more about that allegation after the initial publicity generating splash?

[Micajah]

Regarding the need to count the signatures and the ballots at the polling places after the polls are closed, Washington law requires that this be done -- and requires the polling place workers to note any discrepancy between the number of signatures in the poll book and the number of ballots in the ballot box.

Unless this law was utterly ignored (despite the repetition of much the same thing in the SecState's August 2004 emergency rules), there ought to be a written record of any discrepancies for each polling place.

Here's the statute:

http://www.leg.wa.gov/RCW/index.cfm?fuseaction=section&section=29A.44.280

RCW 29A.44.280
Duties of election officers after unused ballots secure.
Immediately after the unused ballots are secure, the precinct election officers shall count the number of voted ballots and make a record of any discrepancy between this number and the number of voters who signed the poll book for that precinct or polling place, complete the certifications in the poll book, prepare the ballots for transfer to the counting center if necessary, and seal the voting devices.

[2003 c 111 § 1127; 1990 c 59 § 53. Formerly RCW 29.54.015.]

NOTES:

Intent -- Effective date -- 1990 c 59: See notes following RCW 29A.04.013.

[Torrid]

This morning I placed a call to the SoS office, and developed a set of questions which someone was willing to receive. It would seem that this is not the reconciliation of ballots to voter credits, but simply an attempt to square ballots and signatures. In the larger polling sites with as many as 10 or more precincts, it may be that there is a dispensation, particularly in the case where a lockdown occurred soon after.

As soon as I get answers to these questions, I will relay them.

[north clark county]

TJ,
Your comment seems reasonable, about squaring ballots and signatures. However, once the crediting process starts, the number of ballots and signatures shouldn't be changing. One would think that the crediting of names from the poll book to the voter roll wouldn't introduce as much error as evident in King County. I await the response you get to your questions.

[Micajah]

Torridjoe,

I looked to see what change was made in 2003 to the statute that requires the counting of ballots and signatures at the polling places.

It simply changed the language to put the counting after the disposal of unused ballots, rather than immediately after closing the polling places.

So, the counting of ballots and signatures has been a statutory requirement since at least 1990. (1990 session laws chapter 59 section 53 is the previous law that's mentioned in the brackets below the text.)

It seems like 14 years ought to be long enough for all the county elections officials to learn of this legal duty, so it will be interesting to hear their explanations if they didn't comply.

Here's the text of that 2003 statute:

http://www.leg.wa.gov/sl/2003-04/5221-S_sl.pdf

(Passed both houses in April and approved by governor May 7, 2003.)

2003 Session Laws, Chapter 111
Sec.1127. RCW 29.54.015 and 1990 c 59 s 53 are each amended to read as follows:
DUTIES OF ELECTION OFFICERS AFTER SECURING BALLOTS. Immediately after the ((- close of the polls and the completion of voting -)) (+ unused ballots are secure +), the precinct election officers shall count the number of voted ballots and make a record of any discrepancy between this number and the number of voters who signed the poll book for that precinct or polling place, complete the certifications in the poll book, prepare the ballots for transfer to the counting center if necessary, and seal the voting devices.

[Colin]

I found your website through Soundpolitics.com. Very interesting how you try to justify what has happened in our state..:

"In our opinion, the rejection of valid votes is always worse than the acceptance of invalid votes, unless the result of official fraud."

Why is that always worse? What possible rationale can you provide for that?

Why don't you say what you are really thinking..., "we prefer counting invalid votes, just as we did in Florida, Ohio and every other state so that the Democratic party has a fighting chance of winning important elections. We also like votes from felons and illegal aliens because they tend to think more like us and vote Democrat. Furthermore we love mistakes and have lots of excuses for them when they result in a Democrat winning. Should they ever result in a Republican winning we'll make sure to send in Barbara Boxer and Al Sharpton (all expenses and "consulting fees" paid by DNC) to make wild and unfounded accusations of voter intimidation."

The real shame here is that people like you are doing everything you can to fight the truth and undermine democracy all for the advancement of the ironically named Democratic party. King County admits to errors that greatly exceed CG's margin of victory and we're just supposed to deal with it because they were "innocent" mistakes. And what makes them innocent? Because there is no proof of fraud carried out by CG herself. F'ing Great! Thanks fellow Americans for supporting lies and fighting the truth.

[Torridjoe]

The rationale is the same that holds it's better to let 10 guilty go free, than punish one innocent. Government cannot 100% prevent individuals from defrauding the system, any more than a grocery store can prevent shoplifting or other fraud 100%. But what they CAN do 100% is guarantee access for those who wish to participate, and who have the inviolate right to participate.

As for the rest of your post, it sounds more like what you want to think we're thinking, than any rational or factual reference to other elections. And it's odd you would accuse us of "fighting the truth" in comments under a posting that corrects the facts.

[colin]

you correct facts? that is priceless.

[colin]

so now i have a little more time to respond to your response.

"The rationale is the same that holds it's better to let 10 guilty go free, than punish one innocent."

How are these two scenarios comparable? You claim to use facts, and indeed "correct facts", but how on earth do you come to the conclusion that these two scenarios are remotely comparable?

Let's assume for argument's sake, however, that you are correct and we decided to follow the policy of counting all votes valid or invalid just to be sure we weren't disenfranchising anyone. Let's say that Washington state has 100 residents with U.S. citizenship and are of voting age and all agree through their constitution or legislation that felons are not permitted to vote. Following that 20 residents are convicted of felony offenses. There are 80 legitimate voters left. During the next governor race 45 vote Democrat and 35 vote Republican. The felons, however, knowing they are not permitted to vote, do so anyway and all vote Republican. The final result is a decisive 55-45 victory for the Republicans. A Democrat might argue that 55+45 does not equal 80 and therefore 20 of the votes are obviously from felons or other fraudulent votes and the election should be thrown out. If I understand correctly, you would disagree with that. While mistakes "were made" by the election officials you accept that mistakes happen and better to err on the side of counting too many votes rather than disenfranchise people? Please correct me if I'm wrong and advise as to when it makes sense to throw out an election.

"Government cannot 100% prevent individuals from defrauding the system, any more than a grocery store can prevent shoplifting or other fraud 100%."

Grocery stores may not prevent shoplifting 100% of the time, but nevertheless they do just about everything they possibly can. The grocery business is one of the lowest margin, least profitable businesses on the planet (if you needs facts to back that claim just visit any public SEC filings for Safeway or Albertsons on www.sec.gov). Therefore they must, for the sake of their business, take shoplifting very seriously. While they can't catch every shoplifter, they try everything they can to catch them and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
Now are you arguing that the State of Washington and its election officials are doing everything they can to prevent fraud, catch those who commit fraud and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law? What "facts" do you have to support that conclusion? Dean Logan has gone on record to admit the following:
1. mistakes were made
2. the magnitude of the mistakes was several times greater than Gregoire's victory
3. nothing has been done to rectify the mistakes
4. nothing will be done to challenge fraudulent votes because it is not the state's responsibility to do so
5. his one recommendation is to be more prepared and try harder next time

If you need sources for this please check with any newspaper's website.

Somehow I don't think the boards of Safeway or Albertson's would appreciate an attitude toward shoplifting that was comparable to Logan's attitude toward election irregularities.

And finally as for your comment about me wanting to think what you are thinking...
I don't "want to think", I do think. If what you meant to say was that I wanted you to think those things, well you're wrong. What I want you to think is that we have a right to live in a free and democratic country. Unfortunately we don't. And the governor's election in Washington proves that.
Or perhaps you meant to say that I believed you think those things. That is true. I come to that belief based on your efforts to undermine the Republican party in Washington through inappropriate comparisons and incorrect statements posted on your website. I pointed out the inappropriate comparisons and what made them inappropriate. Shark already pointed out your incorrect statements.

[Torridjoe]

Colin--
*the scenarios are comparable by construction, not by degree. They both espouse the principle that relying on enforcement of laws to prevent malfeasance, is better than directly preventing that malfeasance by burdening the rights of those who play fair. It's not an unusual nor radical concept; in this country we choose to err on the side of freedom. Is it better to try to keep your kids from getting into the household's knives, or to simply not have knives for ANYONE to use?

*"we decided to follow the policy of counting all votes valid or invalid just to be sure we weren't disenfranchising anyone."--that's not an accurate assessment of anything I've said. Obviously you don't count invalid votes if you know them to be invalid.

*In your example, if you are talking about an election happening in the context of current WA law, then yes--I would disagree. If the standards of enforcement were insufficient to prevent the example you give, then the legislature must be charged with correcting the deficiency. But the elections officials may be satisfied that they've done their jobs, as long as they have applied the rules in force at the time. And I assume you are speaking about a situation where it is not possible to determine which votes were illegally cast, and who they were cast for.

*"Grocery stores may not prevent shoplifting 100% of the time, but nevertheless they do just about everything they possibly can. "--that is legal for them to do, of course. I assume you agree that they cannot prevent shoplifting by shooting the shoplifters when they catch them.

*"Now are you arguing that the State of Washington and its election officials are doing everything they can to prevent fraud, catch those who commit fraud and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law?"--No, I am certainly not arguing they are doing everything they can. What I am arguing, is that they appear to have done everything that they could reasonably do, given the laws in place at the time of the election. I would completely agree that a statewide felons database would vastly improve their ability to weed out ineligible felons. That will happen by 2006. But for 2004, well, you folks in Washington should have argued for it/paid for it sooner. You go to vote with the laws you have, not the laws you wish to have.

Your points 3, 4 and 5 all appear false to me. Point three is clearly false; King went to court to correct a mistake that disenfranchised 566 voters. Who opposed their intent to correct their mistakes? Dino Rossi, of course.
Point four would appear to be false simply on the basis of Stefan's hearing tomorrow, challenging a registration in front of Logan. And I believe you are confusing "the state" with "the elections division of a county." Logan is right; he has neither the authority or the funding to reject otherwise valid registration applications, or seek out possible felons from among the 1.2 million registered voters in King. I think point five is contradicted by the post-mortem issued by Logan, although you use the word "one" to encapsulate a potential range of items.

I have no idea what reference you are making to me "undermining the Republican Party." They're not even a party to the lawsuit, near as I can tell. I'm not undermining anything; I am relating my interpretation of Washington electoral law, something that is available to anyone with a computer and a modem. If you've got a factual beef with my conclusions, make them known.

Please elaborate on which "incorrect statements" Sharkansky pointed out, if you wish.

[Colin]

Now I find it amusing that your response starts right off with another weird and inappropriate comparison of children playing with knives and responsible adults casting ballots. Oh well.

Even funnier is that you state, "Obviously you don't count invalid votes if you know them to be invalid." Well I couldn't agree more! But here is the problem- King County did count invalid votes that we all know are invalid.

Weird comparisons and admissions aside, it looks like the main crux of your argument is the following:
"You go to vote with the laws you have, not the laws you wish to have." Wow, that's an admission of failure if I ever heard one. Another way of saying it is, "As a result of the election, clearly the intent of the voters of Washington is to have Rossi as governor, but due to legal technicalities associated with setting up an election, we'll just let Gregoire be the governor."
If the election system or the laws governing elections are not perfect we have every right to make corrections. In a democracy we should do the best we can to represent the will and intent of the people and not just rely on a system, no matter how inaccurate, because it was the system we started the process with. Should the people of WA spend more money/time/effort on the election system to make it better? Sure, I agree with you, that would be a good idea. But there is no reason why we can't correct past mistakes if we have the power to do so.

[Torridjoe]

Colin, you'll have to provide some evidence, ANY evidence, that King County knowingly accepted votes cast illegally. So far not a bit of evidence has been presented to that effect. Otherwise, you simply twist wording to say "...that we all know are invalid." Well, no--we did NOT know they were invalid when they were cast. And now that they have been cast, they are irretrievable.

I also know of no evidence to suggest that the intent of the voters was to have Rossi as governer, much less that the evidence is clear. None has been forthcoming to suggest that Rossi earned more votes than Gregoire; if you know of some, I suggest you notify the WSRP. Another way of saying it, would be that you cannot follow laws that are not actually in place. Those "legal technicalities" are in fact the law of the land, and you seem to be suggesting that officials not follow that law precisely.

I agree we have every right to make corrections to the laws if we don't think they serve us well. Which is why a slate of election reforms passed through to the Senate floor in Olympia yesterday. As for correcting past mistakes, what mistakes are you referring to?

[Colin]

Just look at the cover of the Seattle Times pal. Felons voted. Is that not evidence? If that is not evidence than what on earth is?

Now that those invalid votes have been cast they are "irretrievable?" If they are irretrievable than maybe we should have a new election, got it?

The WSRP already has the info, but thanks for the recommendation.

No, I'm not suggesting officials not follow the law. In fact, I am saying they should follow the law. The problem is too many officials seem to think that not following the law is acceptable and if they get caught they can simply call it "an innocent mistake or series of mistakes" or "not their responsibility."

Glad you now agree that if the laws in place aren't adequate to conduct a fair election, they should be changed. And as for past mistakes, that is a cute question, but perhaps just the mistakes that inspired the "slate of election reforms" that passed through to the Senate floor in Olympia. Or perhaps the mistakes of counting and certifying those "irretrievable" votes cast by felons...

[Torridjoe]

Colin sez:
Just look at the cover of the Seattle Times pal. Felons voted. Is that not evidence? If that is not evidence than what on earth is?

I say:
It's not evidence that they knowingly accepted them, no.

Colin sez:
If they are irretrievable than maybe we should have a new election, got it?

I say:
On what grounds? There's no provision for invalidating an election based simply on the presence of illegal votes.

I'm not sure the WSRP has the RIGHT info; they've been wrong before. Their counts of felon voters remain suspect, particularly without confirmation from the state.

I confess I don't know what you're referring to when you talk about officials not following the law. Who broke the law in general 2004?

When you say "I now agree," what prompted you to believe I had changed my mind? That's a basic principle of American life--don't like it? Try to get the law changed.

Your answer to my question about "mistakes" doesn't make sense. If they followed the law, it's not a mistake, is it?

[Colin]

I was curious if you ever responded and was pleasantly surprised that you did.

I guess there is really no debate here since you philosophically believe the following:
1. felons voting is ok, just so long as election officials don't "knowingly" accept those votes. (conveniently there is practically no way for those officials to know nor have they ever made an effort to find out the criminal records of voters in the past)
2. Same applies to dead people
3. Same applies to foreigners
4. the presence of illegal votes doesn't invalidate an election.
5. when an election official admits to not following the law and making a mistake, you you step in and say it wasn't a mistake. If election officials hadn't committed mistakes than why would they say they did? And why on earth would you contradict them when you weren't even there and have no idea?!?

http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/185998

What are you going to say next, that 1+1=3?

[Torrid]

When you say I believe things 1-3 "are OK," I'm not sure what that means. Do I think it's right for them to vote? No. Is it something we must accept as having happened, and further accept that the elections board had little ability to do anything about it by law? Yes.

As for philosophically believing #4, it helps to understand that it's true by law. The mere presence of illegal votes does not and CANNOT invalidate an election, otherwise there hasn't been a valid election in all of US history.

I don't see in your cite which election official admitted they broke the law. I never said they didn't make mistakes; I've said repeatedly they did. But mistakes are part of human endeavors. That's not the same as intentional violations of law.

Thanks for checking back.