If it's Not Close...
...as Hugh Hewitt says, they can't cheat. If it is close, on the other hand, we can't help but be suspicious:
With Washington state in the middle of a recount of its amazingly 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.
The GOP went to court Friday to try 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 and why they were not counted previously.
Hey, it might be strictly legitimate. But it's reasonable to be suspicious when stacks of "uncounted" ballots are found in warehouses.
UPDATE: Reader Bruce Bretthauer adds:
It is worse than Yahoo news and others are saying in Washington State.This is the third recount. The first two both went for the Republican, Dino Rossi. The Democratic Party (after raising funds nationwide) is paying for this third (and supposedly final) hand recount.
During this hand recount the King County Canvassing Board is "interpreting" the ballots, usually along party lines (two Democrats, one Republican). Pencil marks next to a candidate's name are counted as a voter intent, a ballot that was voted straight for one party but without a vote for governor is interpreted as showing intent to vote for that party's gubenatorial candidate (Washington State has a strong tradition of crossing party lines, but the Canvassing Board went this way by a vote of...guess what, 2-1 along party lines). In another case someone wrote in Christine Rossi (the Democratic candidate is Christine Gregoire, the Republican candidate is Dino Rossi). The Canvassing Board voted (2-1) that the voter's intent was the Democrat, Christine Gregoire.
I'm afraid we're going to see more and more of this in the years to come.
UPDATE: Reader Max Wheat demurs, at least in part:
Reader Bruce Bretthauer is right that it's worse than what you're reading in the press. However, he's inaccurate on a few points:1) This is the 2nd recount. The 1st recount was a machine recount, now we're in a hand recount.
2) His point about the canvassing board giving a vote (to either candidate where the governors race wasn't voted on by the voter) based on the party line vote in other races is the first time I've heard that. I don't think it's true.
3) The ballot with the Christine Rossi write-in vote was awarded to Christine Gregoire because the bubble was also filled in for Gregoire. The voter also filled in the bubble and wrote the name of the candidate in the write-in line throughout their ballot. It wasn't reported if the voter got first and last names screwed up in other races. What can you say about voters like this other than since they can't understand ballot instructions, they shouldn't be voting.Oh, and also, John Kerry contributed $200K for the hand recount.
Max also directed us to a local blog called Sound Politics (good pun), which is covering the recount.
