King County Elections Director Dean Logan appears to think poorly of a likely request by failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire to demand a hand recount. Gregoire lost by 42 votes to Republican Dino Rossi after a machine recount was completed yesterday; the earlier margin for Rossi had been 261 votes. Most of Gregoire's gain came in King County, where Seattle and some suburban voters form the largest part of her base.
Here's Logan, like Gregoire a Democrat, in today's Seattle Times:
"When you're talking about close to 900,000 pieces of paper, I think the machine count is going to be more accurate than a manual count," said Dean Logan, the elections director. "You introduce another human interface into the process. There's a margin there for errors to be made."
Errors which Gregoire and Washington state Democrats are counting on, it seems. More from The Times:
Democrats made it clear they will probably request a hand recount, either in selected counties or statewide, after Democrat Christine Gregoire finished the first statewide recount 42 votes behind Republican Dino Rossi.If a hand recount is ordered in King County, election officials said yesterday they expect to rent a large room — likely at Boeing Field — where 70 tables could be set up for recounting.
In contrast to this week's machine recount, in which ballots were fed through optical scanners, next time the scanning would be done by human eyes. Workers would count ballots in teams of three: two to count and a third to record their results.
Meanwhile, Washington state Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt wins today's tin foil crown for these accusations, reported today in this Seattle Times story ("A Governor By Christmas?"), but uttered earlier in the week:
"This is a Karl Rove-driven operation in this state," Berendt said earlier this week, referring to President Bush's chief political strategist. "We are not going to let the Washington, D.C., Republicans steal this election from Chris Gregoire."
Paul, Paul. Back on your meds. Now!
And Ms. Gregoire: As a career "public servant" and politician, I know it's hard to let go. But the time has come. You're giving your party a black eye, and badly embarrassing yourself. As a former state Attorney General, a cushy six-figure jobs awaits you in any one of a number of Seattle law firms. Justice has been dispensed. Get on with your life, so the State of Washington can get on with its business.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 25, 2004 11:40 AM
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» Rossi v. Gregoire: Democrat dishonesty from The Flag of the World
The Governor's race has been largely quiet over the Thanksgiving weekend, but Josef, Pulling on Superman's Cape and the whole crew at Sound Politics--among others--have been keeping tabs on it. Meanwhile, the conservative vote-fraud guru John Fund h... [Read More]
Tracked on November 29, 2004 10:37 PM
*Who* is trying to steal the election? What planet is this guy operating from?
Someone needs to buy Paul a beer so he can go cry in it.
Posted by: Mike Christianson at November 25, 2004 01:09 PMPosted by Mike Christianson at November 25, 2004 01:09 PM
Well, the WA Dem Party will try to steal the election. They're all afraid of not just a change in administrations but also potentially going beyond that into regime change. The state employee unions are desperate and leaning on their "siblings" at the county & city level to help them out. Plus, "Governor Dean" Logan hasn't exactly been fair-handed in this... more like "fair and balanced" (references to FOX NEWS and Dem mocking of intended).
I blog about all of this at great length under "What's Next In the Rossi-Gregoire Fight" and until yesterday night, "Scary Development for Rossi" in which I talk quite a bit about Logan at http://josef-a-k.blogspot.com . If you click the time of posting at the bottom, you can get the hyperlink to the specific entries.
Posted by: Josef at November 25, 2004 08:29 PMThere is an unavoidable rate of error in every method of counting votes, either by machine or by hand. When the margin of victory is less than the rate of unavoidable error, which appears to be the case here, it is meaningless to talk about confirming a vitor. There is no "victor" to discover, and the best we can do is to declare a winner by applying an agreed upon set of rules.
The State's electoral law apparently stipulates that a hand count trumps a machine count, or any combination of machine counts. One can argue that this rule is undesirable, because machine counts are more likely to be accurate, but such a rule is not manifestly unreasonable merely because it permits someone who has lost two straight machine counts to be elected.
Of course it is true that the validity of some ballots may be disputed; that someone will have to resolve these disputes; and that the political convictions of those who do the resolving may affect the outcome. (Shades of Bill Clinton. It really does depend upon what the meaning of "is" is.) But that is a problem common to any method of vote counting and is not a ground for complaint, even if every vote counter is a Democrat and every matter of interpretation is resolved in Gregoire's favor. Evidence of deliberate electoral fraud justifies an objection; reference to the human condition does not.
If the electoral laws of Washington permit Gregoire to pull this election out of the abyss, I will be as disappointed as anyone. But let's not play Democrat and whine about it until the end of time.
Posted by: Tom Rekdal at November 26, 2004 10:44 AMI have multiple posts on statistical analysis of the recount and a video about Dean Logan that you'll want to catch - video post, blog.
Posted by: MC at November 27, 2004 01:13 AMComments don't seem to take html - try:
http://pullonsupermanscape.typepad.com/pull_on_supermans_cape/2004/11/wa_governors_ra_5.html
Posted by: MC at November 27, 2004 01:15 AM