WA Gov. Race: Omerta Breaks

Sound Politics ^ | 10 January 2005 | Stefan Sharkansky

[Publius]

The King County Elections staff are starting to break "omerta" and talk about some of the monkey business that's going on in their deparment. In the extended entry is an anonymous e-mail from someone claiming to be a King County elections worker that was sent to the Rossi campaign on the morning of Nov. 17 [it was later that day when the first count was completed]. Some of the hints in here have been confirmed by later events. Notice in particular the questions about the sending of military ballots and the tie-in to today's Seattle Times article and the mysterious update to the King County "fact sheet". I just obtained this e-mail today. You would be correct to be skeptical of any such bombshell revelations from an anonymous source passed along by a political campaign. All I can say is that I'm getting a number of e-mails and blog comments from different people who are longtime observers of the KC elections department. Some of these tipsters are anonymous. Others give their names and provide corroborating details with each other, with the anonymous ones and with independent sources. I'd be surprised, frankly, if every single detail in all of these tips will ultimately be proven true. But I'm willing to wager that some of what's alleged here will be proven true. Enough that not only will the election be set aside, but that some major figures in King County government will be taken out.

My friendly invitation to potential whistleblowers at the King County Elections department: If you're aware of any wrongdoing, come forward. Whether it's blatantly criminal [less likely, in my opinion] or simple mistakes that could have changed the outcome of the election but have gone unreported [more likely, I imagine], come forward. It's your civic duty as a public servant.

The election worker's e-mail follows:

I work at elections and I spent most of the night tossing and turning without being able to sleep. I just felt like I needed to send you a message on an anonymous computer before I go into work today. I can't contact you directly, because I can't afford to lose my job, and I am hoping that you can just have your lawyers look into these things because if you expose where you got this information from it will point a finger right at a few of us here in the office who are just disgusted with what is going on. But if there was ever an investigation, we would all be happy to tell the truth.

Before I start, I just want to say that I don't consider myself to be a Republican. Actually, I work in elections, so I don't really consider myself a Democrat, either, but I probably vote for more Democrats than Republicans.

But I am just sick to my stomache about what they are doing to you people (the Republicans) here in King County. I voted for Gregoire, I'll admit it, but it sure seems to me that it's much more important for the votes to be counted correctly and for everyone to know the election was fair, than for one side to be able to screw around with the numbers to make their candidate win in a close race. Like the Democrats are doing here.

I have been reading all of the articles in the papers because honestly we get more correct information about what we are working on from the newspapers then we do from our own management. We're all spread out in three different places, and even in the administration building, we are on two different floors so we don't have the opportunity to talk with each other as much as normal, plus management tries to keep us from having certain information because they are always afraid of leaks. But we do talk enough to know when things are just not right and there's times when what's right for the voters has to be more important than anything else.

I have worked here for years, and we used to be all about the voters, and making every vote count every day and in everything we did. That was the attitude from top to bottom. That's not the way it is anymore and it hasn't been for a couple of years. I'm tired of management being able to lie to the press and getting a free ride. And don't believe the crap about Ron Sims not being involved. There are people from his office coming over here all the time. They have it set up like the Mafia - the Don can never be touched because all the communication goes through the trusted lieutenants. But don't you believe for a second that Ron isn't calling the shots, and isn't ALWAYS calling the shots.

Here are some things from the inside view that seem like they should be important to this election.

1. I think you should ask Bill or Dean point blank if there were any problems with the military ballots and see what they tell you. Maybe they will tell you the truth, maybe they won't. Word finally got around to us regular workers that the only military ballots sent out were the overseas ones on October 8 or 9 (which was late already), and that any we put in the computer or that were what we call domestic (US mail address) didn't go out because of a "glitch" in the computer. I get tired of everything being blamed on a glitch. This is just plain a screw-up by the absentee people. They had the data to mail these ballots out and they just didn't do it.

   We kept getting complaints from military people by phone and email before the election and some after, and so anyvoter who realized early enough that their ballot was not coming and had the opportunity to pick up the phone (some military people are on assignments that keep them from being able to call the outside world, even when they are stationed here in the US) and called was sent a ballot, but anyone who did not, or could not call in time did not get one. If you want do public disclosure requests for any emails about this (like copies of the complaints to the office), do it quick.

   We have rules being enforced about erasing email fast to make sure that it doesn't get backed up and nobody from the outside can request email and the county can't get in trouble for not providing it. I think this is because of the lawsuit from that guy that got the county fined, but they claim it is for better "information management". I think this is illegal, it seems like complaints that come into the election office belong to the people and better information management doesn't consist of erasing documents and voter complaints, but who am I to say? I just work here.

2. Like I said in the one above, if you want any documents for a recount or for any lawsuits, better ask King County for them now, because we have been told to delete things to keep them from getting out to the public. You might want to ask the county to freeze anything they have. At least make them tell all of us staff not to delete our e-mail or "old" documents.

3. I think someone needs to do the math and find out where the extra mystery 10K ballots really came from, because we sure don't know and we work here. We can figure out about 3,000 more than we thought, mostly provisional ballots sent from other counties and some late arriving overseas ballots with good postmarks. The absentee supervisors have gotten all weird and secretive when people ask. And no, they weren't just sitting around here. The extra "good" ballots appeared over the weekend. I don't know what absentee "supervisor" told you people that we don't have a way of counting the incoming absentee ballots, that's just bulls**t if you pardon my French. We DO have a way of knowing how many absentees have come back.

   The ballots are sorted and counted as they come in every day and we know how many have come in. We post it on the internet for crying out loud. There hasn't been any large amount of ballots come back for a whole week.

   The mail drops down to just a trickle by the Monday after the election. Even if you take all of the ballots we got in the mail on last Saturday and this past Monday (hardly any, including military ballots) and add them to provisional ballots we got from out of the county on Saturday and Monday, it just doesn't add up. And there are ways to slip in extra ballots and make them look legitimate if the race is close. Ask for an exact accounting.

   They will not be able to give you one right away. They will have to play with the numbers to make it look legitimate.

4. The Democrats asked to see just the provisional ballots that had no signature. If they were aware of what is really going on, they should have also looked at the provisional ballots that are being set aside and not counted because the voter is "not registered". We were so far behind with putting registrations in the computer that at one point the supervisors just made a set of boxes with thousands of registrations "disappear" overnight.

   (And no, they were not entered. We had a night crew, but not a night crew so big or experienced that they could input thousands of registrations overnight.) We were weeks behind with no way to catch up and they were telling everyone and the papers that we were caught up. It was just a nightmare. We never would have gotten to these people anyway before the election even if the box had not disappeared. I bet that these cards will magically reappear after the election as registrations that were "too late" for this election. But they weren't. I saw when they came in. They were in on time, and now those people didn't get to vote or voted a provisional ballot that won't be counted.

   Please look in to these things. Every vote should count, and people should be able to expect that the elections are not going to be a screwed up mess every time. And there's tons of screw ups in this office that get covered up each election. It didn't used to be this way.

   Aren't there Republicans on the Council that can call for an investigation? AN OUTSIDE investigation, not a set-up to help hide the dirt and prop up Ron Sims? And not a Secretary of State investigation when they will just cover their friends' butts again. I know Reed is a Republican, but those people at the Secretary of State's office and the management they sent here are all friends, and will cover for each other above all else.

   (And yes, I have voted for Ron Sims before, but never again. I'm tired of working for a county that is corrupt, and this person who votes for Democrats would gladly vote for a Republican if they will clean up the county. Hopefully you guys can run someone competitive next year, who's moderate enough that us disgruntled Democrats can vote for them, too.)

[MD_Willington_1976]

The poop is flying into the turbine...

[GretchenM]

I hate the idea of Christine Gregoire taking the oath of office and moving in to the Governor's Mansion, but when
I consider that she may be calling U-Haul not too long thereafter ...

[GretchenM]

Thanks for pinging me, prairie. Pretty interesting stuff.

[ezo4]

I really want to see these WA state rats crash and burn bad.

[goodnesswins]

"He could do this, the grounds are abundantly there, but the GOP will not sufficiently back him."

What makes YOU so SURE they will NOT "back him?" HHHMMMMM?????? You're in Texas.....we're here in Washington, the State......

[Scotsman will be Free]

Gregoire will be sworn in, and serve at least one term. Liberals control Washington state, and the republicans are spineless.

[RetiredArmy]

Yes.

[djf]

Link to todays Seattle Times article

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1317652/posts

[FormerACLUmember]

Democrats ... act like thugs in elections, destroy or remove signs, issue lies about the opposing candidates, release scurilous material on Republicans just before election day so the candidate hasn't got the chance to refute the false claims, call in thugs from out of district or state to assist in "voting drives".

Correctamundo Perfecto.

AND they have become clones of Josef Goebbells: "If you tell a big enough lie, tell it over and over, the people will actually believe you."

[b4its2late]

Probably too late, huh?

[Publius]

Not too late at all. The election will be put on trial in Chelan County in a week or two. By then it should be obvious to all that the election was tainted one way or another.

[b4its2late]

Good. This should be fun to watch. Hope it all gets corrected.

[Thud]

ping

[livius]

I never thought of that explanation for Jesse's actions, but I bet you're right. Very plausible.

[Billthedrill]

Wish I could be more optimistic, Pub', but it's starting to look like Chrissy's staff has done the math and prefers taking their chances in court to risking another election. As well they might.

The only upside I see is that it might take Cantwell down with it if the WA 'Pubbies decide to keep the issue alive. I don't see Gregoire re-elected when it comes to that. This one is just a little too blatant.

[Colonel_Flagg]

Soldiers always follow lawful orders.

[cake_crumb]

"Maybe Senator Boxer will get her wish and we'll get to the boottom of all the corruption going on in elections these days ;)"

...At about the same time Rev. Perryman wins the reparations lawsuit against the Democrat party

[ken5050]

I've been following this story on-and-off... the author, Sharkansky, seems to be the point person in the investigative reporting..lots of folks are talking to him..on and off the record..what's his background, bio? any perspective on this views..

[Bush gal in LA]

Wow! Incredible stuff! But isn't there a way to track this person down, even though he or she doesn't want to be? Even if you go to a coffee house or library isn't there some way to trace this?If the witch is being sworn in tomorrow someone has to come forward now!