Washington State Recount, Part Deux

[Q]

From cnn.com:

More uncounted ballots found in Washington governor's race

Friday, December 17, 2004 Posted: 2:34 PM EST

SEATTLE (AP) -- With Washington state in the middle of a recount of its close governor's race, election officials in Seattle's King County entered a warehouse Friday and found a plastic tray containing 150 misplaced ballots.

The discovery brings the number of belatedly discovered ballots to 723 in the heavily Democratic county -- potentially enough to swing the election to Democrat Christine Gregoire.

Republican Dino Rossi won the Nov. 2 election over Gregoire by 261 votes in the first count and by 42 after a machine recount of the 2.9 million ballots cast. On Thursday, with every county except King, Pierce and Spokane reporting, Rossi had pulled ahead by 74 votes.

King County Elections Director Dean Logan told The Seattle Times that the ballots in the tray, like the 573 other ballots found earlier this week, were mistakenly rejected because there was a problem with how the voters' signatures had been scanned into the county's computer system. The tray apparently was left behind and forgotten in the warehouse, Logan said.

Election workers, along with observers from the political parties, searched the locked cage inside the warehouse.

Officials became curious because none of the 573 ballot envelopes contained names beginning with the letters A or B, and only two started with C, The Times reported. That prompted Friday's search.

King County election officials want to count the ballots, which they say are valid votes. Republicans want those ballots to stay rejected -- or at the very least, they want King County to investigate further before adding them to the mix.

"We want to get some answers about these very suspicious ballots," Republican State Party Chairman Chris Vance said Thursday.

The GOP planned to ask a judge Friday to block King County from taking the newly discovered ballots out of their outer envelopes, which bear the voter's signature.

Vance said removing the envelopes would make it far more difficult to determine where the ballots came from, whether they were stored correctly and why they were not counted previously.

[Q]

Either you are ignorant of the 1000 ballots which Dean Logan 'found' between the first vote count and the first recount (which no one challenged), or you don't care how many times Logan 'finds' more votes to help Gregoire.

Who is this "you" you speak of, CARLHAYDEN?

[Q]

Either you are ignorant of the 1000 ballots which Dean Logan 'found' between the first vote count and the first recount (which no one challenged), or you don't care how many times Logan 'finds' more votes to help Gregoire.

Who is this "you" you speak of, CARLHAYDEN?

Well "Q", I quoted you!

I noted that the account you gave was highly misleading in that it lacked many essential facts (well, it was CNN) which would clarify the situation.

I don't know why you called me ignorant, CARLHAYDEN.  I was merely providing that article as a service to update the forum on the crazy goings-on out there.  The entire thing was a direct quote from CNN.  I had nothing to do with which facts they chose to report.