Precinct FED 30-3301, or simply Precinct 3301, is located in Federal Way in south King County off I-5. I've never been there and I don't know much about it except that it helps illustrate why this election, in Dino Rossi's words, is a "total mess" and needs to be nullified.
Now that King County has released the precinct canvass for the manual recount, we can see how Precinct 3301 voted in each of the three counts
| Count | Gregoire | Rossi | Bennett | Write-in | Undervote | Overvote | Total |
| Initial | 191 | 142 | 14 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 355 |
| Machine | 191 | 143 | 14 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 356 |
| Manual | 191 | 141 | 13 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 352 |
In fact, it wasn't as simple as merely adding 59 ballots, they actually added a net total of 325 ballots to some precincts and removed a net total of 266 ballots from other precincts.
Precinct 3301 is one of the precincts that lost ballots. How can this happen? It's not that marks were interpreted differently. It's that pieces of paper disappeared in one count, or only existed in somebody's imagination in an earlier count. We're assured that in every case the diligent election workers tallied and retallied and checked each others numbers and that their ballot counts were perfect! Every time they changed they were perfect! The process is perfect, except for those four annoying pieces of paper that somehow disappeared from Precinct 3301 during the manual recount, and the other 262 pieces of paper that somehow disappeared from all those other precincts, and the 325 other pieces of paper that magically materialized somewhere else.
We know a little bit about what happened in the machine recount. A new ABSENTEE ballot for Dino Rossi somehow materialized in this precinct. But we don't yet know what kinds of ballots were lost in the "more accurate" manual recount, because the precinct canvass for the manual recount doesn't include that information.
But fortunately, this time we now also know how many voters voted in Precinct 3301. The King County voter file tells us that 354 citizens voted in Precinct 3301 -- 252 Absentee, 85 Polling Place and 17 Provisional. 354 voters cast valid ballots, of which only 352 can be located.
Precinct 3301 isn't the only precinct that has more voters than ballots, it only came up on the top of my list because it lost the most ballots in the manual recount. In fact, 684 out of 2,616 precincts have more voters than ballots, for a total of 1,512 ballotless voters. Were these ballots simply lost? Did the elections office (contrary to instructions) release a file that reflects changes in voters' addresses and precincts that have occurred in the weeks since the election? Or what? We may never know.
And that's just one more example of why this election is a "total mess" and why we need to set it aside and move on to a revote.
UPDATE: I thought to cross-reference the Dec. 29 voter file against the Nov. 1 voter file to see if any voters have changed precincts. Some have. One more strike against KC Elections. I specifically asked for the voter list to describe the voters as of the day of the election. Inter-precinct migration explains only 1 of the Precinct 3301's 2 ballotless voters. There are still at least 353 voters who cast ballots in Precinct 3301 on the day of the election, but only 352 of these ballots were counted. I'll work on a comprehensive analysis of all precincts.
The Seattle Times website has now posted a nifty tool where you can look up King County voters in their database and it's supposed to tell you if and how they voted. [It appears to be based on the same county datafile that I obtained yesterday]
Problem: The Times database is incomplete and somewhat misleading.
Most of its data seems to be correct. For example, you can look up "Sharkansky" and it will correctly tell you that I live in Seattle 98103 and that I voted at my polling place. They even spell "Stefan" correctly.
BUT, "most" is only good enough for horseshoes, hand grenades and the King County elections office. It's not good enough for a newspaper which is attempting to tell you what the King County elections office did to your ballot.
It completely ignores the nearly 170,000 "Inactive" status voters, most of whom have genuinely dropped out of the voter universe for one reason or another. But inactive voters are not the same as cancelled voters and they're still eligible to vote. Indeed, 3,220 of KC's Inactive voters cast valid ballots this election. Unfortunately, if you look up any Inactive voter in the Seattle Times database, it will tell you that the voter is "not found", even if their ballot was counted.
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Oops, moments after I posted my initial version of this post I had a brainwave to delve deeper on a point of fact and I now retract some statements that were posted here for a couple of minutes. My error. If you're reading this post for the first time, "never mind"
Press release from the Governor's office:
With so many disenfranchised military voters, how can this be a fair election?As for the cost of a revote: a Gregoire term would be a lot more expensive.Bellevue, WA – Today Dino Rossi stood with the family of a disenfranchised Marine from Snohomish County to again call for a revote in the governor’s race.
Tyler Farmer is a Marine serving in Iraq, who was recently wounded in Fallujah. He is registered to vote in Snohomish County, and went to extraordinary lengths to make sure he’d be able to vote, but he didn’t receive his ballot until after Election Day. His parents, Charles and Marty Farmer, and his brother, Dylan Farmer, today questioned the fairness of the election process.
“I’d like to ask Christine Gregoire how she can take office in good conscience when so many of our Armed Forces, including my son, weren’t allowed to vote,” said Charles. “The rules were changed for some people in King County, but not for everyone else. That’s wrong.”
Rossi said the election is such a mess that at this point the best solution is a revote. He said his office is receiving a steady stream of calls and e-mails from members of the military, or their loved ones, who never got their ballots or received them too late.
Rossi’s spokeswoman Mary Lane said Gregoire’s remark about the election not being “golf” and that there are “no do-overs” isn’t a sufficient answer to people like Tyler Farmer.
“Christine Gregoire is trying to sweep this election mess under the carpet because she doesn’t want to face up to all the wrongfully disenfranchised people across Washington,” said Lane. “But people like Tyler Farmer, and all the other servicemen and women who were denied their right to vote, aren’t going away. And the fact that this entire election process has been a complete mess isn’t going away, either.
“We need a revote because the people of Washington deserve to have a governor who actually wins an election fair and square.”
