Washington state high roaders (or anyone who knows)

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Fletchette

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Whatever happened with the contested governor's election? The last I heard it was being taken up in court, but now we are almost half-way through 2005. If I remember correctly, there were a few recounts until Gregoire won. Sounds fishy to me... :scrutiny:
 
There is a trial date later this month or next. The republicans are building a war chest. They are not likely to back down.

The Democrats recently hosted a dog-and-pony show in which they demonstrated that even if every single vote of an alleged voting felon was discarded, Gregoire would still win a recount . . . .
 
The trial starts this coming Monday in Chelan County Superior Court (Wenatchee, WA). Looks like up to 129 persons may have cast more than one ballot in King County (our most populous -- and urban -- and liberal county) while election officials there acknowledge not only having allowed many to cast illegal ballots, but that they didn't count other valid ballots. The provisional ballot thing is huge as well, not to mention the felons who allegedly voted ...

Should be interesting. Dino Rossi still hasn't conceded ...
 
Heh heh, the Demos are still playing the vote count game. I really think (hope) that the Repubs will just point out that enough errors were made to void the whole dang thing. Courts have already ruled that the vote count is over, so the Demos are just wasting time and resources documenting what should not even be considered. Of course this all depends on judges giving fair rulings, which is not a given....
 
Yup, it's bad.

We live in a system of checks and balances that are really rather well designed.

At some point, it's more important for Washington State to have a Chief Executive than it is who that executive is.

The Governor (and she IS the Governor) has already demonstrated quite a bit of her agenda, and it will come back to haunt her.

I've been very careful to pronouce her title correctly, and to observe her authority exactly.

That way, I can insist on the same if a candidate I support wins.

At some point, Rossi is hurting us all. If he doesn't concede, if the margin is 200 votes or 2,000 votes, there's no reason to expect the next losing candidate to concede when the margin is 20,000 votes.

There is more than one conservative here in Washington State who is embarassed by Rossi's position, and the position of the local Republican party.
 
Any time the margin of error in an election exceeds the margin of victory there will be trouble.

The collective expenditures on this fiasco will exceed $5M before the state S.Ct. issues its order on the inevitable appeal. My prediction is that it will all amount to nothing. But the rematch in 3.5 years will be exciting.
 
The former Attorney General has demonstrated her agenda enough that, if the courts were to mandate a revote, she would lose. Most specifically, she campaigned promising not to raise taxes, the turned around and increased the gas tax, the cigarette tax, and reinstated the estate tax, and she and her legislative allies called all of these "emergency measures" to get around a citizen's initiative (I-601) that required a 3/5 supermajority for any tax increases and increases in state spending limits. Therefore, she and her party will fight as hard as they can to keep that revote from happening.

It is known that things went very, very wrong in King County. There were problems in other counties as well, but nothing anywhere near King County. The most egregious problem in King County was with the ballot reconciliation numbers. county officials couldn't make the numbers add up, simply because they had no idea how many ballots had been printed or sent out, so they fudged the numbers and reported that to the state for certification. 6 months later, King County still can't make the number of ballots counted match the number of people credited with voting, and the difference between the two (there's more ballots than voters) is far larger than Gregoire's margin of victory.

The best source of info I've found on the net is www.soundpolitics.com.
 
I was pretty much upset with the election after reading about the issues with mis-counted, ballots, illegal voters and such. I did not believe that Chris Gregoire "won" the office of Governor.

But after months of reading, seeing and hearing about this whole mess, I sort of wish it would just dry up and go away. The Seattle Democrats that control the Board of Elections need to be run out of town and that office needs to be non-partisan. The office of the Secretary of State needs to be non-partisan (although I do think Sam Reed did everything correctly and according to WA laws when he certified the election). King County royally screwed up this whole deal and they should pay the price.

IMHO, this is now more about the two parties whining for face time and bragging rights as compared to dealing with serious flaws in the election process. If there had been good record-keeping and voter registation data that was correct, we would not be in this mess. I could cerainly accept a 100-vote difference in deciding the Governor's offcie (or any other office) if the those who voted were legally allowed to vote as prescribed by law. no convicted felons, do dead people, no missing ballots, no late military ballots. ALL of these idiots involved should have done their jobs correctly!

The WA Legislature has come and gone. Bills were passed and signed into law by Governor Gregoire. She has appointed new Agency heads, approved a budget for the next biennium, taken action on some serious issues within parts of state government, and has otherwise acted as a duly-elected offical. I don't necessairly agree with her party and platform and the budget sucks, but he trees are still green, WA has not been taken over by invading Oregonians, and the traffic is still bad.

If the Republicians win the court fight and Rossi is declared to be the "should-have-been governor" what would happen to all of the things done so far? Another Legislative session (pleeeze NO!)? All of the new laws declared invalid? More court fights over what the now-disposed Governor had done with her offficial pen? She won, he can try again next time. The Court needs to simply say "sorry folks, it's a done deal, but you must fix the problems and go for it next time".

Over the last 8-10 years, I have become pretty much apolitical. No political party has come up with a platform that appeals to me. Politicians are, for the most part, more concerned with themselves than the good of the people they represent. If politicans had to depend solelly on their record for being re-elected, (in other words, take away the party backing with the money and influence or lobbyists) most would not last a single term. Donald Trump can seem to fire anyone, why can't we seem to do it?

Maybe it's time to see some term limits on US Senators and Representatives. Just think, with term limits in Congress, we wouldn't have had to put up with Kennedy and Feintwit for so long. :D If nothing else, there would be "fresh blood" in our system of government.
 
I can certainly sympathize with those who have finally tired of the subject. The two parties have long since gone from trying to "win" to trying to make the other party "lose." Ultimately, the voters are the ones who will lose the most.
But still, the situation cries out to be corrected. Would any of us shrug our shoulders and walk away if they had been held up and robbed of their wallets? Not likely-- we'd want the robber to pay for his transgression by spending some time in jail. Granted, we'd have to take time off work to testify at the trial and that would cost us even more money, but I think most of us would do it.
In this "election" the Governor's office was evidently stolen from the people. If so, the perpetrator (or perpetrators) need(s) to be punished. Not only that, but the person or persons who profitted from the crime need to-- at the very least-- pay back what they received from this illegal act. "The people," mentioned three sentences back, are going to have to tighten their belts and pay to make all this happen.
To do anything less is tantamount to rewarding the man who just stole your wallet by handing him the keys to your car too.
 
Correct me if my memory is failing, if I remeber correctly,

1) That in addition to the number of felons voting, an unlawful act,

2) That there were more votes cast than there were voters shown as voting

3) That there were also more ballots cast In Kings county than registered voters in King County.

4) That they kept finding votes "that they had missed" every time they came up short for "the right person to win"?
 
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Well Desertdog, that's what the Republican camp says happened. I don't know one way or the other. I doubt we'll ever really know but this trial in Chelan county has a chance of digging out some of the truth. If it turns out that there was fraud, the perpetrators need their hands slapped... at the very least, though public flogging might be a better object lesson to any who might be thinking of stealing another election.
Oregon is a miserable sinkhole of liberalism, but so far as I know, we've never had anything like Washington is now dealing with. Of course, that might be because our crooks are better than theirs. :rolleyes: Everybody has to be able to excel at something...
 
To those of you decrying everything wrong with our last state election, I say this: you don't know what happened, either.
 
Jammer Six, excuse me? We don't know what happened? All of those reports of vote fraud, felons voting, more votes than voters are just figments of our imagination? Please support your statement! Do you know something the rest of us are not priveleged to know?
 
I think that when all is said and done not much will happen. To the extent wrong-doing is found, it is more likely to be either incompetence or the "oh ship - I better cover my asci" variety. It seems to be human nature (or at least the nature of some humans) to see a conspiracy when plain old fashioned human error and incompetence explain a set of facts equally well. Occams razor.

An election is a "system," and all systems have a margin of error or a failure rate. As I've said before, the margin of error inherent in this election was greater than the margin of "victory."

I would not at all be surprised to find human error, incompetence, etc. contributing to that margin of error. I have not heard anything to date (other than Chris Vance moving air) that supports an assertion of criminal behavior.

I would ask those who have concluded crimes occured if you would be happy if you were accused of a crime in the course of your employment, then received national media coverage, and were tried and hung in the court of public opinion before a piece of evidence had been reviewed by an impartial judge or jury.

That said, if the court finds vote tampering or ither such conduct then we all should expect a vigorous criminal prosecution.
 
At some point, it's more important for Washington State to have a Chief Executive than it is who that executive is.
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Sorry, but this Coloradan must respectfully disagree. Better to do without a governor than submit to massive, systematic vote fraud.

There's already more than enough government; unfortunately, there's also more than enough massive, systematic vote fraud.
 
orry, but this Coloradan must respectfully disagree. Better to do without a governor than submit to massive, systematic vote fraud.

There's already more than enough government; unfortunately, there's also more than enough massive, systematic vote fraud.
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You seem to be saying that there's always fraud, and I agree.

Where we disagree is that you seem to be saying that it's better to have massive voter fraud and no governor.

The whining the Republican party in this state is doing is making them look worse than the worst Democrats.
 
Hmm...

I was very surprised to have it turn out to be such a close race.

I thought Rossi might have been a breath of fresh air, but no longer. Politician he is, along with all the trappings.

Vance (GOP Chairperson) could take some lessons on integrity from Reed (GOP who certified the election according to LAWS)

Have listened to lots of claims, bashing from both sides.

If it is lawfully decided to have another election, I would like to see both parties pay for it....instead of the taxpayers.

Oh, btw, did you know that both parties are trying to overturn our primary voting methods? Trying to make us declare parties and then vote along party line ballots? Just how independent is that?
 
There's a number of reasons for that. Some of them are good, some of them aren't so good. It depends on what you believe, and which theory of political science you subscribe to.
 
Actually, Reed certified the election based on the acceptance of King Counties certification. The ballot reconciliation report given by King County has since proven to be false, and has been stated to have been known to be false at the time it was submitted to the state by King County.

Unfortunately, Sam Reed cannot now decertify the results based on the false information given by King County.

Oh, and six months later, King County still hasn't made the number of ballots match the number of voters. Something's fishy in Seattle, and it's not just the Pike Street Market.
 
What makes that the best source?
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They actually investigate the data that the election folks release and ask logical questions regarding the irregularities in the data. This seems to be something the two Seattle fish wrappers are unwilling to do. Any newsworthy story on the election contest posted by the Times or PI was scooped by the soundpolitics website. They publish the story and a day or two later you'll see it in one or both of the papers usually in less detail.
 
They actually investigate the data that the election folks release and ask logical questions regarding the irregularities in the data.
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How is it possible to "...investigate the data that the election folks release...", and if it is possible, how is it that a news service would have the necessary access to do so?

If this service has access to information, why doesn't everyone else have access to the same information?

And finally, what is it about this service that makes them more credible than the local Republican headquarters, the local Democratic headquarters, or the guy in Bill's Bar, Grill and Radiator Repair Shop?
 
I don't care who won. I do care about ballot fraud. This needs to be investigated every way. If fraud is proven then those responsible need hung. There is no place for fraud in any election.
 
There is both fraud and error in every election.

Nothing is foolproof, and the rest is probability. There isn't a precinct in the United States that could count the ballots from a given election more than once and come up with the same count, using any system.

The difference here is that it's on the front page because of how close the count was.
 
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