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Yuchenko also elected Governor of Washington, or something apparently very similar...

Thread ID: 18612 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2005-06-10

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Kevin_O'Keeffe [OP]

2005-06-10 13:38 | User Profile

[url]http://us.altermedia.info/?p=978#more-978[/url]

Vote Stealing in Washington State: OK by Courts

by Charles Coughlin

June 7, 2005

For the last six months a legal battle has been waged over who should be the governor of Washington. Republican Dino Rossi won the initial election by 2,123 votes. The Democrats then “found” a number of provisional votes, which cut Rossi’s lead to 261 votes. Rossi’s margin of victory was then small enough so that an automatic recount was triggered. Rossi won the machine recount by 42 votes (and therefore the election). The Democrats however demanded and got a hand recount. Rossi was winning the hand recount by 49 votes when the Democrats announced that they found some more votes in King County, which were eventually allowed over protests by Republicans.

Dino Rossi won the Washington state election two times. He won the first election. He was still winning after the Democrats introduced some highly suspicious provisional votes, and he won the officially mandated recount. (Provisional votes are typically walk-in people, who never registered properly.) That should have been the end of the election.

The Democrats even wanted to count 3,000 invalidated ballots. These ballots typically were filled out wrong and therefore became invalid and thrown in a discard pile. Each voter, who “messed up” his first ballot, would get a new ballot and then fill that out. Counting invalidated ballots is flat out insane, yet the Democrats tried to do that and pushed that legal challenge all the way up to the state supreme court.

Every time the Democrats wanted another chance to win (or steal) the election, a judge gave them that opportunity (except for the “too obviously crooked” attempt to count invalid ballots). The Democrats finally got a hand recount thanks to yet another sympathetic judge. This allowed the maximum opportunity for “slight of hand” vote manipulation. Thanks to the hand recount and yet more newly found “ballots” the Democrat candidate pulled ahead by 129 votes.

Once the Democrat was ahead, judges in Washington state suddenly became unsympathetic to anymore vote recounts. The Republicans pointed out that the number of votes by felons exceeded the margin of victory by nine times. It seems likely that 90 percent of the felon vote went to the Democrats, but a common sense assessment would not be admissible in court. One article notes “An expert witness for Republicans challenging the 2004 election of Gov. Christine Gregoire testified Thursday that when illegal votes are subtracted, the GOP candidate was the rightful winner… Cal Tech political science Professor Jonathan Katz testified the way to tell who really won the election is to deduct illegal votes from both candidates’ totals, according to voting patterns in their precincts. Using that method and relying on the GOP’s list of 1,183 allegedly illegal votes, Katz said Rossi actually won by at least 71 votes.”

So virtually every major request by the Democrats to allow suspicious provisional votes and to allow a hand recount were allowed by judges, but the one request by Republicans to subtract illegal votes was thrown out. According to the judge, illegal votes could only be changed if the felons came forward and (truthfully) said who they voted for or if someone, who stuffed a ballot box came forward and admitted his crime. Rather than waste more time and money trying to appeal the case to the liberal state supreme court in Washington, Rossi has decided to give up contesting the election considering how heavily the judicial deck is stacked against him.

The Seattle Times published a timeline some of which appears below:

Nov. 9: As absentee ballots are tallied, Rossi closes the gap and then pulls ahead by 2,123 votes.

Nov. 12: The state Democratic Party successfully sues King County to get the names of voters whose provisional ballots are in danger of being disqualified. Over Republican protests, Democrats turn in more than 400 signed affidavits from voters to verify their ballots.

Nov. 17: With all counties reporting, Rossi wins by 261 votes. State law triggers a machine recount.

Nov. 30: The secretary of state certifies the result of the machine recount, making Rossi the winner by 42 votes.

Dec. 2: Democrats declare they will seek an unprecedented hand recount of the 2.9 million ballots cast in the governor’s race.

Dec. 8: Counties begin recounting ballots by hand.

Dec. 13: King County announces it has discovered more than 500 ballots that were mistakenly rejected by election workers. By the end of the week the number tops 700.

Dec. 14: The state Supreme Court unanimously rejects the Democratic Party’s petition to force counties to reconsider about 3,000 invalidated ballots — including the 700-plus from King County — in the hand recount.

Dec. 17: Republicans seek and get a temporary restraining order blocking King County from counting the newly discovered ballots. With every county reporting but King, the state’s largest, Rossi holds a 49-vote lead in the hand recount.

Dec. 22: King County’s unofficial results tip the race to Gregoire, giving her a 10-point margin of victory over Rossi. The Supreme Court rules that King County may reconsider the 700-plus mistakenly rejected ballots.

Dec. 23: Gregoire wins the recount by a margin of 129 votes, after King County counts the newly discovered ballots and certifies its final results.

…

(Rossi then challenged the election due to illegal votes. Gregoire meanwhile was named governor and allowed to run the state for six months. Finally a judge arbitrarily threw out Rossi’s challenge effectively ruling that nothing should be done about illegal votes unless the illegal voters turn themselves in.)

Okiereddust

2005-06-10 20:30 | User Profile

I'm pretty sure this is a big freeper thread. It doesn't surprise me though. What's happened is in this country we've left all the electoral decisions to the courts. Courts though can be as politicizable as anything else.

I think in Washington, at least as much if not more so than other states, judges are elected. I don't know if most are inititially appointed by the Governor, (a Democrat the last few years in Washington) I think they are. Anyway really I've noticed state judges tend to be quite close on political questions to the political interests that put them there, and not surprisingly.

So basically we've put the defects in our country's democracy inordinately in the hands of judges to resolve. As Jim Robinson always argues "whatever else you're thinking of, we've got to vote Republican, think of all the judges they appoint) In Washington now we've seen judicial democracy has now failed in a big way. Maybe the neo's can tell us how to fix it. (We've got to keep getting votes for pubbies, and now even more, not just 50% but 55%).

Looks like the old days are returning to Washington State, like in the late 30's when one pundit described our union as follows "ther are 49 states and the Soviet of Washington".

Okiereddust

2005-06-10 21:03 | User Profile

Here are some of the Freeper threads on this, just in case someone thinks they might be doing something useful.

[url]http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;s=Washington%20State[/url]

Faust

2005-06-13 01:00 | User Profile

I wonder if the Republican would have without all the asian and mexicans voting? The GOP is becoming less and less able to win anywhere!

And Bushie and Mccain are trying make sure even more of them get in, it is hard to feel too sorry for the GOP they caused the problem.