Seattle tech guy Mark Atwood doesn't think too much of people who have to request provisional ballots, and worries about fraud stemming from the counting of invalid PBs, a concern still highly pertinent to the Rossi (R) vs, Gregoire (D) nailbiter for WA Guv. Here's Mark's prescient Election Day post, which I just came across.
I'm a voter. However, annoyingly, a lot of the other people at the polling station were not."Uhh... Yeah... Um, here's my old driver's licence, and, umm... I thought I was registered `cause I kept getting calls from politicians, and umm...".
And so the poll workers have to handhold every single one of these mouthbreathers thru filling out a provisional ballot (The Federal Bench has no shame and sees no limit at all to it's authority) which takes frikken FOREVER, and jams up the line for that precinct.
I saw more provisional ballots filed than real ones. I have a bad feeling about all these provisional ballots. The real ones are going to add up to a statistical tie, then under time and politcal pressure the election officials will unwrap all the provisionals and throw them into the stack, and then the voter registration data on the the wrappers will turn out to be bogus on a not insignificant number of them, but by then it will not be possible to pull the bad ballot out of the pile...
If after (the) media barrage, and after MotorVoter, and the "Help America Vote" act provisions, if someone *still* can't figure out how to register properly, they SHOULD be disenfranchised.
Tell it, Mark.
He doesn't say anything about thousands of previously unexpected absentee ballots showing up in Dem-friendly King County, as the WA Guv race goes down to the wire (leaving Gregoire up 158 votes this a.m., with more than 20K left statewide). But then, who knew?
Today looks to be a day of reckoning, and the Seattle P-I reports there are more votes left to be counted in R-Dino Rossi counties than in D-Christine Gregoire counties. However, as the P-I notes, Dems are hustling to get invalidated votes (especially provisionals, in King County) validated. I hope the "observers" are observing things VERY closely in counties where Gregoire is ahead and provisionals are still being checked.
So. We'll see. Sooner or later. Stay tuned to Sound Politics and the WA Sec. of State's Guv. vote count site for the latest.
ADDENDA: Lawrence McArdle vents, appropriately, in a comment string to this post at Sound Politics:
"Nobody's asking the right question:
"WHY EVEN HAVE PROVISIONAL BALLOTS???
"Look at all of our taxpayer dollars being pi$$ed away, and this election tally running weeks long, just because we can't tell people to VOTE WHERE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO VOTE!"
Also because some of the vote counters have a crappy work ethic.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 16, 2004 10:12 AM
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