Should there be a revote?

[Nym90]

I'm actually quite surprised that half of the respondents to this poll support a revote in at least one of these two elections.

[CARLHAYDEN]

I'd need something really solid before calling for revoting.  So far I'm seeing a whole lot of nothing.

It's a close election, but so what, that doesn't mean fraud.

Here's another example (numerous other examples have been posted in other threads on this forum)"

Anne M. Witte passed away in February 2004. Her obituary reports that Mrs. Witte lived in Sammamish with her husband Vernon E Witte, who survives her.

The King County voter database shows that Vernon E Witte and Anne M Witte of 248th Ave SE are the only people with that last name registered in Sammamish and that they both voted absentee in November.

I'm thoroughly disgusted by this. Ironically, Mrs. Witte's obituary describes her as an active Republican. Whoever cast her ballot should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The King County Elections office also has a lot to do to explain why a person who passed away nine months before the election is still being sent an absentee ballot.

[J. J.]

I'd need something really solid before calling for revoting.  So far I'm seeing a whole lot of nothing.

It's a close election, but so what, that doesn't mean fraud.

Here's another example (numerous other examples have been posted in other threads on this forum)"

Anne M. Witte passed away in February 2004. Her obituary reports that Mrs. Witte lived in Sammamish with her husband Vernon E Witte, who survives her.

The King County voter database shows that Vernon E Witte and Anne M Witte of 248th Ave SE are the only people with that last name registered in Sammamish and that they both voted absentee in November.

I'm thoroughly disgusted by this. Ironically, Mrs. Witte's obituary describes her as an active Republican. Whoever cast her ballot should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

The King County Elections office also has a lot to do to explain why a person who passed away nine months before the election is still being sent an absentee ballot.

That's one.  128 to go.

[Alcon]

If this leads to anything, Democrats will do the same thing and this election won't be over by the next gubernatorial election.

By the way, CARLHAYDEN, no one knows who she voted for. It's just as likely, if even moreso, that a family member voted Rossi for her.

[WMS]

The King County Elections office also has a lot to do to explain why a person who passed away nine months before the election is still being sent an absentee ballot.

The 1993 National Voter Registration Act. That's why.

I spent four years seeing this up close and personal, and due to the provision forbidding purging voters for not voting, even if they've never voted since 1992, there is a LOT of deadweight in the voting rolls...easily-turned-to-fraud deadweight.

And in NM, even if the County Clerk is presented with evidence that someone died, they cannot delete the voter unless every part of a long and tortuous bureaucratic process is completed, especially the part where the State Bureau of Vital Statistics HAS to send official notification that a voter has died. And if a voter's relatives don't send notification to the BVS, the dead voter stays in the system and can still 'vote'. How do you think so many dead people vote, anyway?

Welcome to Crappy Voting Laws 101.

[J. J.]

I fraud could be shown to to have possibly effected the results, maybe.  Nobody has shown that yet.

[CARLHAYDEN]

Here's some more evidence:

GOP: Hundreds of ballots suspect

By Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporter

Two King County election workers, both Republicans, yesterday said they believe hundreds of provisional ballots were illegally fed through vote-counting machines on Election Day.

The special ballots are given to voters who show up at the wrong precinct on Election Day or whose registration is in question, and they are supposed to be set aside until the voter's status can be determined.

Election officials acknowledge that once provisional ballots were put through voting machines, it became impossible to separate legitimate from illegitimate ballots.

Joe O'Donnell, who worked on King County's 26-member canvassing crew after the Nov. 2 vote, said he learned of 150 to 300 instances in which provisional ballots went through counting machines at polling places.

O'Donnell said at a GOP news conference in Bellevue that he learned about most of those instances by calling polling-place inspectors to ask about discrepancies between poll books and the number of ballots counted.

"The most common response when I specifically, personally called these inspectors was, 'Oh, those ballots did go through the Accu-Vote by accident.' To me it seemed like an innocent mistake, but in a close election it makes all the difference," O'Donnell said.

The other Republican, Jim Clingan, who inspected a three-precinct polling place in the lobby of a downtown Seattle apartment building, said it appeared at the end of Election Day that 30 provisional ballots had gone through the counting machine there.

Clingan said he and four election judges had trouble keeping track of voters in The Josephinum on Second Avenue because many nonvoters walked through the lobby on their way to their rooms or an adjacent restaurant.

O'Donnell and Clingan were temporary county employees who had worked on past elections.

The provisional-ballot problems are the latest in King County's troubled vote count in the closest statewide race in Washington's history.

After Democrat Christine Gregoire won a second recount over Republican Dino Rossi by 129 votes, Republicans have been sifting through voting records trying to find evidence of irregularities and fraud to justify a new election.

GOP state Chairman Chris Vance said the party also is investigating reports that ballots were received in the names of dead people and felons and that some people voted more than once.

"Given this new revelation — that King County is admitting that hundreds, maybe many, many hundreds, of ballots were cast improperly in this election and were cast into the sea of ballots where we can't get them back — Christine Gregoire should join with Dino Rossi in asking the Legislature to call a new election," he said.

King County Elections Director Dean Logan, who cut short a business trip to Washington, D.C., to deal with the GOP accusations, said the provisional-ballot problem has been exaggerated. "It's absolutely true that we know there were places where provisional ballots were put through Accu-Votes. " Logan said.

Until workers figure out why 3,539 more votes were counted than the number of people listed as voting, Logan said, it won't be known how many provisional votes were improperly counted.

O'Donnell, one of the Republican election workers, did not say he personally witnessed provisional ballots put through voting machines, but he said 20 to 30 provisional-ballot envelopes came back empty because voters had mistakenly put their ballots through the machines. Inspectors at other polling places said they had torn up and discarded the ballot envelopes, O'Donnell said.

Jim Rigby, a Republican observer at the King County Administration Building, said Tuesday that he'd seen a voter walk into the building and put a ballot in the counting machine.

Election officials are attempting to figure out why records show more than 60 more votes cast than the number of poll voters at the administration building.

Logan criticized O'Donnell for speaking at the Republican news conference: "It's disappointing to me that someone who works in the [Records and Elections] Division would choose to address that issue in a partisan fashion."

---

What Logan meant is that when he steals an elections, he really dislikes it when someone blows the whistle on him.

[Nym90]

Carl, what is your proposed solution? It seems that all you do is bash Dean Logan...if you feel there is a problem, what should be done about this? Should there be a revote?

Also, is Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed incompetent, or is Logan paying him off to say that there's no evidence of fraud?

[Hitchabrut]

No/No

[J. J.]

Carl, how many of those were discovered to have been invalid; so far, it's a whole bunch of nothing.

[Alcon]

Carl, you can post as many "hey, this is suspicious" posts as you want, but there's a certain rule. When a lot of suspicions arise over something, it should be taken a long, hard look at. The same goes for accusations with suspicion. There have been so many, and no real fraud detected. Doesn't that tell you something?

[CARLHAYDEN]

Answer a simple question:

Where votes counted in King county that should NOT have been legally counted?

Does the number of votes equal or exceed the 'victory' margin of Gregoire?

[Alcon]

Answer a simple question:

Where votes counted in King county that should NOT have been legally counted?

Does the number of votes equal or exceed the 'victory' margin of Gregoire?

Actually, those are two rather complex questions.

1) I don't know. And, no matter what rumors you present, you don't either. It may have happened, but if it was one or two votes, it really doesn't matter.

2) How am I supposed to know?

[J. J.]

Answer a simple question:

Where votes counted in King county that should NOT have been legally counted?

Does the number of votes equal or exceed the 'victory' margin of Gregoire?

Basically, you have to be the one to present the evidence that there were illegal votes counted and the amount.  The burden of proof is on the Rossi forces.

[CARLHAYDEN]

The King county administration has already publicly admitted that votes were counted which were NOT verified.

The total number appears to well exceed 'victory' margin of Gregoire.

So, when both sides admit that votes which were counted which should NOT have been counted, what's the problem?

Yes, further specific evidence will be presented in court.

I suspect that the courts will not overturn the election even if they find that the number of votes counted which should not have been counted exceed the Gregoire victory margin.

However, state and federal charges may lie against against King county officials.

[J. J.]

The King county administration has already publicly admitted that votes were counted which were NOT verified.

The total number appears to well exceed 'victory' margin of Gregoire.

So, when both sides admit that votes which were counted which should NOT have been counted, what's the problem?

Yes, further specific evidence will be presented in court.

I suspect that the courts will not overturn the election even if they find that the number of votes counted which should not have been counted exceed the Gregoire victory margin.

However, state and federal charges may lie against against King county officials.

Because something is "NOT verified" does not make it invalid.  They should have a list of the voters who went to the polls.  It is entirely possible that those votes were completely valid.

[ATFFL]

We have a statewide revote in NC courtesy of our friendly neighborhood democrats when they lost by 2000+ votes because roughly 4000 votes were lost due to poll worker error.  The poll workers will not be working the polls ever again.

Personally I think the revote in NC is a bad idea, especially since we can identify all the people who voted but did not have their vote counted. 

What should happen in WA is  the disputed ballots should be examined and the ones that should not have been counted should be removed.  Same goes for the four other counties that are having trouble.  If this cannot be done that county revotes, only people who showed up on Nov. 2nd can participate.

And Logan, along with any other county executive who screwed things up, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for election fraud and forced to pay as much as he can for the revote.

[CARLHAYDEN]

The King county administration has already publicly admitted that votes were counted which were NOT verified.

The total number appears to well exceed 'victory' margin of Gregoire.

So, when both sides admit that votes which were counted which should NOT have been counted, what's the problem?

Yes, further specific evidence will be presented in court.

I suspect that the courts will not overturn the election even if they find that the number of votes counted which should not have been counted exceed the Gregoire victory margin.

However, state and federal charges may lie against against King county officials.

Because something is "NOT verified" does not make it invalid.  They should have a list of the voters who went to the polls.  It is entirely possible that those votes were completely valid.

JJ

Perhaps you have NOT been followng the extensive details in my posts.

First, MORE votes were tallied in King county than persons shown to have voted, either by the precinct registers and/or the requests for absentee ballots.  Logan specifically admits to this.  He brags that there are at least 1,500 votes counted that he can never attribute to persons shown to have voted! 

Second, a number of specific absentee ballots have been shown to be fraudulent.  In one, the woman who supposedly voted had been dead for nine months at the time.  In another specific example, the same person voted twice, having listed the same mailing location on both requests (with one of the reistrations showing the 'residence' being the exact location of Dan Logan's department).

[CARLHAYDEN]

Here's another update in the King county vote fiasco.

Dead voted in governor's race
King County investigating 'ghost voter' cases

By PHUONG CAT LE AND MICHELLE NICOLOSI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS

At least eight people who died well before the November general election were credited with voting in King County, raising new questions about the integrity of the vote total in the narrow governor's race, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer review has found.
 
The evidence of votes from dead people is the latest example of flaws in an election already rocked by misplaced votes and allegations that there were thousands more votes counted than actual voters.

County officials say they are investigating the cases pointed out by the P-I. "These are not indications of fraud," said Bill Huennekens, King County's elections supervisor. "Fraud is a concerted effort to change an election."

The P-I review found eight people who died weeks before absentee ballots were mailed out, between Oct. 13 and 15, but were credited with voting in King County. Among them was an 81-year-old Seattle woman who died in August but is recorded as having voted at the polls.

The state is required by law to send monthly lists of the deceased to county auditors so they can purge those names from their voter rolls. But those lists are sent only every few months. That means thousands of deceased voters may have been sent absentee ballots.

"If we don't receive a notice that they're dead, then we have no way of taking them off the rolls," said Dean Logan, the county's elections director. Relatives of the deceased can and do cancel some registrations, he said.

Doris McFarland said she voted for her husband, Earl, who died Oct. 7.

"I called up the elections board and said, 'Can I do it because he wanted me to vote?' " the Duvall woman said. "The person ... said, 'Well, who would know?' I said, 'I don't want to do anything that is wrong.' "

Huennekens disputed that election workers would say such a thing.

McFarland said she signed her husband's name and mailed in his ballot, along with her own. She said she had power of attorney for her 92-year-old husband, who was blind.

"If I did something that wasn't right, you can just throw that ballot out," McFarland said last night.

Huennekens said one of the P-I's eight cases involved an administrative error that showed a deceased person as voting and would be corrected. In four cases, the signatures on the ballot matched. Huennekens said officials needed further information or could not track down enough information on the other cases.

Election officials said that if cases merit potential fraud, they would forward them on for prosecution.

King County keeps a voter list as a record of who voted in elections and to establish requirements for levies and bonds, Logan said.

The preliminary voter list shows that Mary Coffey mailed in a ballot. But the 51-year-old Seattle woman died about two weeks before absentee ballots were mailed.

"She couldn't have (voted). She died on Sept. 29," said her husband, Michael Coffey. He added that he voted by mail, but destroyed his wife's ballot when it arrived in the mail.

"I don't see how she could have voted. It doesn't make sense. There has to be some kind of error that happened."

Election officials were still looking into what happened in her case.

"Our system of allowing people to vote absentee and never checking anything is designed for voter convenience at the expense of security," said Chris Vance, chairman of the state Republican Party.

He said the GOP has found cases of dead people casting ballots, and it plans to challenge the race results.

Votes from the 2004 election have been heavily scrutinized . With Democrat Christine Gregoire set to take office on Wednesday, Republicans are searching for ways to contest the election and force a revote.

Kirstin Brost, spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party, said, "We're very satisfied with the results of this election. It's the most closely examined election in our state's history."

James M. Courneya of Auburn died three months before the election. But the King County voter list shows that he voted absentee.

"He couldn't have. He died Aug. 7," said his wife, Anna Courneya, who resides at the same address as her late husband. She said her husband didn't receive a ballot but she did. She voted absentee but the King County voters list doesn't register her vote, only his.

Huennekens said Anna Courneya voted using her husband's ballot, and because she didn't cast a separate one, that ballot was valid.

The state Health Department sends out lists of the deceased "every two to three months," not every month as the law states, said Jennifer Tebaldi, who helps oversee the department's vital statistics operation.

"We have an informal understanding with the counties that we send it when there's a bulk of information to send."

County auditors received lists of the deceased from the state three times last year -- on Jan. 28, May 5 and Nov. 1, a day before the election. Most of the names they received in May were of people who died in 2003, because of a lag of four to six months in collecting and sending data.

Secretary of State Sam Reed said a statewide voter database, expected in 2006, would improve the process.

He said he hasn't seen the problem of dead people voting occur in Washington. Voter fraud is a serious crime that may be punished with up to 10 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine, he said.

"We do not expect people to sit down and vote a ballot just because it happens to arrive in their homes," Reed said. "Double-checks are in place."

Rosalie B. Simpson, 81, died of a massive heart attack Aug. 4, but voter rolls show she voted at the polls.

If a voter dies after having voted, it's still perfectly legal, Logan said.

Owen Skau of Federal Way made his choices before he died last October, said his wife, Maya.

"He filled it out," she said. "He always voted. ... He filled out his vote before he fell and had a heart attack. But he had it filled out. I went ahead and mailed it in."

[Nym90]

Carl, what is your proposed solution? It seems that all you do is bash Dean Logan...if you feel there is a problem, what should be done about this? Should there be a revote?

Also, is Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed incompetent, or is Logan paying him off to say that there's no evidence of fraud?

I'm still curious as to the answers to these questions.

[CARLHAYDEN]

First, should there be a revote?

Based on the information provided to date, the answer is yes.

Second, with respect to Sam Reed, he used to be Logan's boss, and was very friendly to him, but is begining to distance himself from Logan as more and more information becomes public.

[J. J.]

The King county administration has already publicly admitted that votes were counted which were NOT verified.

The total number appears to well exceed 'victory' margin of Gregoire.

So, when both sides admit that votes which were counted which should NOT have been counted, what's the problem?

Yes, further specific evidence will be presented in court.

I suspect that the courts will not overturn the election even if they find that the number of votes counted which should not have been counted exceed the Gregoire victory margin.

However, state and federal charges may lie against against King county officials.

Because something is "NOT verified" does not make it invalid.  They should have a list of the voters who went to the polls.  It is entirely possible that those votes were completely valid.

JJ

Perhaps you have NOT been followng the extensive details in my posts.

First, MORE votes were tallied in King county than persons shown to have voted, either by the precinct registers and/or the requests for absentee ballots.  Logan specifically admits to this.  He brags that there are at least 1,500 votes counted that he can never attribute to persons shown to have voted! 

Second, a number of specific absentee ballots have been shown to be fraudulent.  In one, the woman who supposedly voted had been dead for nine months at the time.  In another specific example, the same person voted twice, having listed the same mailing location on both requests (with one of the reistrations showing the 'residence' being the exact location of Dan Logan's department).

CARLHAYDEN, I have been following it and I read the MSNBC story on it.  There is a HUGE difference between something "unverfied" and something "invalid."  Something unverified can be verified, for example.  The complaint is, at worst, that election officials did not follow textbook procedures in counting the votes.  As for the difference in the numbers, first those registers (and I'm assuming you are referring to a "voting book" type register), there could be other reasons, such as incomplete registrations or possibly military personal not using the county absentte system.

You have shown that there are two invalid ballots; okay, show another 127 and I'll consider it.

[CARLHAYDEN]

First, due to the King county NOT following the law, the unverified ballots are not only unverified, but unverifiable.

Second, more specific lists of illegal votes are on their way.

Oh, and BTW, from the official King county website:

The county has stressed that it is still reconciling this list with its vote total in the governor's race. This list shows 895,660 votes counted, and there were 899,199 votes certified by the county in the governor's race. County officials are researching the difference of 3,539 as they work to reconcile computer records with poll books and other election records

[CARLHAYDEN]

You have shown that there are two invalid ballots; okay, show another 127 and I'll consider it.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Here's another specific example:

Here is another weird example

Julianne B. is listed in the Jan 7 file as living in Auburn and having first registered to vote in King County in 1962. She does not appear in any of the three prior voter files that I have. Property records show that she used to live at the Auburn address listed in her brand new registration record, but that she and her husband sold the place in 2000 and bought a home in Pierce County the same year. Julianne B. is shown to have cast an absentee ballot in King County this year.

[J. J.]

First, due to the King county NOT following the law, the unverified ballots are not only unverified, but unverifiable.

Second, more specific lists of illegal votes are on their way.

Oh, and BTW, from the official King county website:

The county has stressed that it is still reconciling this list with its vote total in the governor's race. This list shows 895,660 votes counted, and there were 899,199 votes certified by the county in the governor's race. County officials are researching the difference of 3,539 as they work to reconcile computer records with poll books and other election records

The voters are potentially verifiable.  Let's see what happens after the reconcilliation.

On a second point, a revote is not permitted under the state constitution, from everything that I've heard.