Washington State Recount, Part Deux

[Nym90]

If Gregoire loses the manual count, yes, she should concede. A manual recount of the entire state is the most accurate count possible. Unless there is clear evidence of fraud, whomever loses the manual count should concede. It makes sense to do all 3 counts, however, if the race is close enough, as this one clearly is.

[Nym90]

Fern, you need watering again.

The Democrat candidate won the election for govenor in Montana.

I would assume he is talking about a lesser race in Montana, a State Senate race or some such. Obviously not the Governor's race. He just forgot to specify.

[Nym90]

As I said before, Logan would 'find' enough votes to install Gregoire.

Is there proof that these votes aren't valid?

[Nym90]

CarlHayden, I think you are confusing me with someone else. I merely asked for proof that the votes aren't valid. It would seem that you've proven that King County was incompentent relative to the other counties in the State, but you still haven't proven that there was fraud.

As a similar example, it can clearly be proven statistically that Pat Buchanan's vote in Palm Beach County, Florida in 2000 has something wrong with it, but that doesn't prove that the Republicans cheated and took away votes from Gore. I know it's not the same thing, but incompetence on the part of election workers can cause weird things, like people who want to vote for Gore accidentally voting for Buchanan (poorly designed ballots...yeah, it was a Democrat who designed it, that doesn't make the design any better in my opinion...and I'm not alleging fraud, just that Gore was the legitimate winner from a moral standpoint due to the fact that the votes were incorrectly cast), and like ballots being misplaced, lost, etc.

So it would seem you've proven statistically that King County was statisitcally significantly more incompetent than the other 38 counties, and I wouldn't disagree with that. As for the TANG memos, yes, they were fakes.

[Nym90]

As I said before, Logan would 'find' enough votes to install Gregoire.

Is there proof that these votes aren't valid?

Logically you cannot prove a negative. It is the responsibilityof King County to prove they are valid.

The most amazing thing is that, despite several officials looking, the same person finds each and every new, never before seen ballot.

Answer me this: If Bush lost Ohio by 42 votes and Karl Rove personally kept finding new ballots would you think that was normal or would you be on here screaming bloody murder?

Something is not right here. Whether it is willful fraud or gross incompetence something is not right.

Simply put, there is a roll of who shows up to vote. This gives us a total number of ballots that were filled out. After the first machine count the discrepency between the number of ballots cast and the number of ballots fed to the machine should have been noticed. There should be a record of this somewhere. At that moment King County should have begun looking for the missing ballots, if there are any ballots that were legitimately not put into the counting machine..

Well, actually, I'd say the burden of proof is on those who say there has been fraud, to prove that there has been, rather than on the election workers to prove that there hasn't been fraud. That's the way it works in the United States, if you accuse someone of a crime or other wrongdoing, the burden of proof is on you.

I agree there was gross incompetence. That's not really in doubt.