I think that the election workers who did this should be forced to stand in the stocks for a day with a "STUPID" sign around their necks. Or maybe "LAZY LARDBUTT".
Posted on 12/14/2004 9:51:33 AM PST by Publius
Five hundred sixty-one valid absentee ballots that had been erroneously rejected have been discovered in heavily Democratic King County, buoying Christine Gregoire's hopes of prevailing in a hand recount of the governor's race.
King County Elections Director Dean Logan announced the find yesterday. Hours later, lawyers for the county, the state and Republican Gov.-elect Dino Rossi appeared before the state Supreme Court to argue that counties should not be required to reinspect roughly 3,000 rejected ballots for the hand recount that began last week.
State Democrats filed a lawsuit seeking a ballot reinspection the same day they agreed to pay for a statewide hand recount of the governor's race. They hope additional scrutiny of previously uncounted ballots will give Gregoire enough new votes to reverse Rossi's victory.
Rossi won the first count by 261 votes. That set in motion a mandatory mechanical recount of more than 2.8 million votes, which Rossi won by 42 votes.
Logan said the newly discovered 561 mistakenly rejected ballots would likely be counted.
"We take full responsibility," said Logan, who took over a department that had been criticized in previous elections for the late mailing of absentee ballots. "An error has been made that has prevented valid ballots from being counted. We need to correct the error."
But Logan said the county would not reconsider nearly 2,000 other absentee and provisional ballots that were ruled invalid unless ordered to do so by the Supreme Court.
Representatives for the state told the high court that Washington law makes a clear distinction between recounting and recanvassing (the process by which ballots are validated).
"The place to change their recount statute is the Legislature, not here," Thomas Ahearne, a lawyer for Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed, told the court. "The time to change the recount statute is before the election, not in the middle of the ongoing recount."
While Republicans said the suit is a case of the losing party trying to change the rules to win, Democrats said yesterday's reevaluation in King County bolstered their case.
David Burman, the Democrats' attorney, told the justices that election boards accepted and rejected votes based on a standard that varied greatly county to county.
"Some counties will discretionarily correct, others will not," Burman said. "There has to be more consistency."
If the new votes break for Gregoire by 57 percent as they did countywide, she would pick up 79 new votes.
Up to now, Rossi has been slowly expanding his margin of victory as hand recount results from the state's smaller counties continue to pour in. Last night, his margin had grown to 88 votes, with 24 counties reporting.
Until yesterday, the 561 rejected votes would not have been added to the recount.
But Logan said correcting an administrative error does not mean that the other rejected ballots should be rechecked.
"That would be a dangerous precedent," Logan said.
Ahearne, the lawyer for state, said finding the mistake in King County only shows that the system in place works. But, he said, the counties must be allowed to stop reviewing their findings.
"We have deadlines for a reason," he said. "We have deadlines so we can have closure for elections. ... If we were always looking for reasons to extend the deadline, we wouldn't have orderly elections and we wouldn't have closure to elections."
Ahearne said the votes were found within the statutory deadline for the hand recount. Had the problem been discovered in February, for example, it would and should be too late to overturn the election, he said.
King County Councilman Larry Phillips brought the problem to Logan's attention Sunday, when he discovered his ballot had been ruled invalid.
Apparently election workers found no match when they checked signatures of Phillips and 560 other King County voters against an electronic database. But instead of setting the ballots aside to be checked against the actual paper registration forms, as they should have been, the ballots were simply filed as invalid.
State Elections Director Nick Handy said current law gives King County the discretion to review the 561 ballots in question.
"Matters that have already been decided by county canvassing boards should stand," Handy said.
But counties can review disqualified ballots in cases such as this one involving an obvious inconsistency or irregularity.
"This would be the classic example of an irregularity," Handy said. "People were registered to vote and there was an administrative error. The county can go back and correct that."
Other people, including 26-year-old Miles Erickson, who attended the hearing yesterday, said the counties should be forced to go even further.
Erickson moved from Seattle to Birch Bay near Bellingham in January. He registered as an absentee voter in April.
But Erickson did not receive his mail-in ballot, so on Nov. 2 he went to a polling place and filled out a provisional ballot.
He said Whatcom County election officials mistakenly mailed his ballot to King County, where his voter registration had been canceled. But instead of bringing the problem to his attention, Erickson said, his vote was simply not counted.
"I am angry," Erickson said. "I understand that mistakes happen, but the idea that my vote can be thrown out by mistake and that it can be done without my knowledge and it takes a court order to fix it is just wrong," he said.
During the hearing, Justice Bobbe Bridge asked Burman how elections would reach finality if individuals such as Erickson could bring suit for the right to vote.
"Is every voter supposed to take a lawyer with them when they go to vote?" Bridge asked.
"Perhaps they should," Burman said.
The state Supreme Court could issue a ruling on the case as early as today.
Please ping the chapter.
how convenient. this happened here a couple of elections ago. was a democrat who made the absentee ballots appear too. coincidence?
Bobbe Bridge? OMG, not that old drunk.
Wasn't she the one who got nailed on a DUI + Hit and Run and ended up getting the charges dropped in the most profane example of judicial nepotism in recent memory?
Look, honestly if Rossi lost fair and square I have no issue with Chris Greoire taking the governorship, but everything about this smacks of impropriety.
I hate this crooked-ass liberal state.
"We have deadlines so we can have closure for elections. ... If we were always looking for reasons to extend the deadline, we wouldn't have orderly elections and we wouldn't have closure to elections."
Closure is only guaranteed if the Rats win. If the Republicans win the Rats will do anything to deny them the win or the satisfaction of winning the election. No margin is too great to fight and make false accusations of fraud or misconduct.
Didn't the Supreme Court just smack them with a rolled up newspaper and tell them "NO! Bad Rats!"?
Well now, isn't that convenient.
This is merely a single battle in the war. The will ultimately loose.
It follows that this court cannot order the Secretary to establish standards for the recanvassing of ballots previously rejected in this election. And petitioners’ call for uniform signature-checking standards (seemingly beyond the statutory requirement that the signature on an absentee ballot be the same as the signature in voter registration files) is beyond the relief that can be afforded in this action.1 Petitioners suggest in their reply brief that a claimed disparity in signature-checking standards implicates equal protection concerns under the privileges and immunities clause of our state constitution, Const. art. I, § 19, but they claim no discriminatory intent. We are mindful that King County rejected a higher percentage of signatures than did other counties, but the record before us does not establish the reason for this disparity, and it could be for factors other than the standard employed.2 We do not take petitioners’ argument to suggest that a claimed disparity in rejection rates of voter signatures triggers some independent right, constitutional or otherwise, to a recanvassing of rejected ballots under a newly developed standard, nor does such an argument come to mind.
This hasn't hit the papers yet. If you'd like, I'll format it for HTML and post it as a thread.
Don't ask MY permission LOL...
I think that the election workers who did this should be forced to stand in the stocks for a day with a "STUPID" sign around their necks. Or maybe "LAZY LARDBUTT".
Wife heard yesterday on Carlson, a caller said one of the Supreme Court Justices is the woman (forget name) who was arrested for drunken driving ealier this year or late last year (forget when).
Caller said Gregoire and her are best friends and that Gregoire defended her at her trial.
If true, that cinches it for me regarding any impartiality of the Washington State Supreme Court.
Check out the link in Post 15 then ;0)
You might be pleasantly surprised (as was I)
Can you interpret what this is saying. We're missing some of the background here. Thanks.
Go to the new thread. It's basically saying they can't "recanvass" during a "recount" and a bunch of other stuff... :)
They will just keep "discovering" however many they need to steal the vote.
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