Rossi vs. Gregoire - What About The Other Counties?
I think that their efforts to investigate the correctness of the registered voter and ballot numbers would have more credibility with non-Rossi supporters if it also included an investigation into the 69% of ballots that were cast in all the other counties. There have been very curious numbers coming out of many other counties, that mostly went to Rossi by large numbers, and by choosing to only target King County, no matter how valid their reasons might be - should they prove to pan out - will look more like a desperate attempt to undo the final result, and less like trying to uphold a fair election count.
For example, here are a few things that could also be investigated:
- Why did the final count in Adams County change by 0.788% (almost 1%) in the machine recount? As a percentage this was 9 times the average change, and 7 times greater than the percentage change in King County.
- Pierce County added 459 votes to the tally after their manual recount. This resulted in a 0.303% change to the original tally, double the rate of King County's adjustment. Where did all those votes come from?
- Walla Walla County's manual count resulted in a 0.486% adjustment, again a whopping change compared to the rest of the state. Where did those 100 votes come from?
- In addition to those 3 counties, Cowlitz, Grant, Kittitas, and Skagit counties all produced new votes at a greater percentage of their original counts than King County did. Put together these 7 counties account for 17% of the ballots counted. If you add to that Spokane, Pend Oreille, Ferry and Garfield counties, that also had higher percentages after the machine recount than King County did, that makes up 24% of the ballots cast.
- Whereas King County, representing 31% of the votes altered their count by 1524 votes, those other counties representing only 24% of the votes altered their count by 1746 votes, more than 200 more than big bad King County.
This posting is going up retroactively to my pointing this info out to my friends at Sound Politics. Upon doing so the reaction has been muted - perhaps everyone is finally taking time off and doing a little celebrating for the New Year. Not surprisingly I have been asked to volunteer my time to looking into these numbers. Firstly, I'll admit I do not have the time to do so, as it would be an undertaking I alone, with my schedule, don't have. I hear the catcalls already. However, if someone else does have the time, it would make these investigations more fair. Secondly, I'm of the belief that if anything is truly discovered it will be that mistakes may have been made, but that the numbers are either indications that 1) we don't have all the info yet, 2) the election boards corrected mistakes in the additional recounts, as they should have, and 3) the mistakes were not made maliciously or as part of some kind of fraud.
In this country one is innocent until proven guilty. The speed at which that has been forgotten is astounding. We do not know how the 2004 election anomalies compare to previous elections. We do not even know yet if these are anomalies. It may take a few more days for the election boards to do the necessary work to consolidate their own numbers. We are told that might be later next week.
Until then it would be novel if a Rossi backer, or Rossi himself, started investigating a "red" county. It would make for a good New Year's resolution if we could make this a little less partisan.
Posted at 12/31/2004 07:29:00 PM PT
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7 Comment(s):
Just remember that SP is based in King County and they can't do it all: if you want to expose bias in the other counties, do it... you can't fault them for not doing everything alone. They've got to do what they can.
If anyone can point me to a blog of folks that police these other counties please let me know.
Was King County the last to certify?
"I'll admit I do not have the time to do so, as it would be an undertaking I alone, with my schedule, don't have."
No, you have plenty of time for your trolling at Sound Politics, restating the same tired mantra, but you don't have the time to investigate these "fishy" counties.
Wanna guess what seems "fishy" to me?
Yes, King County was the last to certify. When you have 3 times more votes to count than the next largest county it takes longer to finish the count. As far as I know, there was no reason why other counties could not have delayed the final certification of their vote tallies until the certification deadline.
All I'm saying is that if there was corruption, certifying last was the pefect cover.
What do you think about Japan's $500 mil contribution? Do you think this is going to get into a bidding war over who can spend the most? Would that neccessarily be a bad thing?
Furthermore, I almost voted for Gregoire. I've worked for her Office for the last three & 1/2 years. But I've seen how she tends to forget her supporters/voters in the past...plus she doesn't have a very strong position in the WA business community, and she is worse than Gridlock Gary when it comes to transportation issues.
Plus, during the election, Rossi took time out of his schedule to personally speak with me, Gregoire's spokesperson wasn't even available for comment.
It is nice to hear Japan gave $500 million. We do need to keep in mind that the U.S. has the capability to provide logistical and infrastructural support via military cargo planes and aircraft carriers in the region. But if the boys with their toys want to play "I can do better" then that's fine too. It just isn't the point.
We'll see (perhaps) on Gregoire's ability to get things done. She is a strong character. I usually don't put much weight in personal contact with people that are quite busy. Whether Rossi likes it or not he has to bear the weight of the relative unpopularity of the Republican party in this state, due to a D.C. administration mostly out of tune with progressive Washingtonians.
Case in point, Sam Reed, who because he isn't Republican enough faces the wrath of Vance. Moderate voters are hugely wary of such things and will tend to not vote for candidates who may campaign on a moderate platform, only to be coerced into more extremist or partisan policy decisions by the central office.
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