Washington State Recount, Part Deux

[bgwah]

It was so close I doubt finding the real winner is possible.

Hopefully, riots will erupt through out the state and Civil War will break out in Washington. After a while, the state will be split in two. Eastern Washington joins Idaho and Western Washington changes its name to something cool.  Maybe we can take Portland too, and give Eastern Oregon to Idaho as well. And then, when America takes over Canada, we can take Vancouver and Victoria.

You are correct that it is hard to know who really won.  We can do a second manual recount and get Rossi the winner.

He should get the office for winning two out of three counts though.

It would be interesting to see what happens if the Republicans try to swear ROssi in as Governor.

It would also be interesting to see hwo a revote in a month would go.

That is probably unlikely; another manual recount would be unlikely to change the count by more than 100.

Your second idea is interesting, but unfortunately is sort of against state law, which considers a manual recount the final, last-ditch count, or something of that sort.

If Republicans try to swear in Rossi, they will be summarily ignored and probably made fun of. But it would be in character for a stupid election season.

Hard to say who would win a revote.

At first I would've said Rossi win, but now its his turn to be the whiney loser (which is what Gregoire was) so his popularity may go back down a bit. I'm sure some of the Bennet votes to Gregoire though.

[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.

[CARLHAYDEN]

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.

I apologize Nym, it was NickG that alledged that by some abracadara mathematics, King County hadn't 'found' more votes than other counties considering the size of King county (NickG kept changing his basis from population to percentage of statewide vote, so I gave both comparisons).