Stryder50
Platinum Member
Washington State 2004 Gubernatorial race is the classic case of election manipulations some would claim.
EXCERPTS:
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The 2004 Washington gubernatorial election was held on November 2, 2004. The race gained national attention for its legal twists and extremely close finish, among the closest political races in United States election history. Republican Dino Rossi was declared the winner in the initial automated count and again in a subsequent automated recount, but after a second recount done by hand, Democrat Christine Gregoire took the lead by a margin of 129 votes.
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Gregoire led in almost all polls conducted leading up to the election, but Rossi was able to close in on her late in the race and won considerable support from Eastern Washington. He also ran much stronger than expected in Snohomish and Pierce Counties. Gregoire received strong support (nearly a three-to-two margin) from the largest county in the state, King County, which includes heavily Democratic Seattle. During the initial ballot count, the lead changed hands several times.
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The initial result, as reported by Secretary of State Sam Reed, showed Rossi with a lead of 261 votes, well within the margin for an automatic machine recount pursuant to Washington state law (less than 0.5% and less than 2,000 votes). After a statewide recount completed on November 24, Rossi again came away with the lead, this time by 42 votes.[12]
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After Rossi was certified as the victor on November 29, the Washington State Secretary of State said that "a manual recount was almost a certainty." This view was shared by the Gregoire campaign, with campaign spokesman Morton Brilliant saying that "if all the ballots aren't counted, we will go through the next four years with one candidate's supporters not believing the winner was legitimately elected." and that it was "worth taking three weeks to have four years of legitimacy, and that's what is at stake."[13]
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King County Council Chairman Larry Phillips was at a Democratic Party office in Seattle on Sunday December 12, reviewing a list of voters whose absentee votes had been rejected due to signature problems, when to his surprise he found his own name listed. Phillips said he was certain he had filled out and signed his ballot correctly, and asked the county election officials to investigate the discrepancy. They discovered that Phillips' signature had somehow failed to be scanned into the election computer system after he submitted his request for an absentee ballot. Election workers claimed that they had received Phillips' absentee ballot in the mail, but they could not find his signature in the computer system to compare to the one on the ballot envelope, so they mistakenly rejected the ballot instead of following the standard procedure of checking it against the signature of Phillips' physical voter registration card that was on file. The discovery prompted King County Director of Elections Dean Logan to order his staff to search the computers to see if any other ballots had been incorrectly rejected.
Logan announced on December 13 that 561 absentee ballots in the county had been wrongly rejected due to an administrative error.[16] The next day, workers retrieving voting machines from precinct storage found an additional 12 ballots, bringing the total to 572 newly discovered ballots. Logan admitted the lost ballots were an oversight on the part of his department, and insisted that the found ballots be counted. On December 15, the King County Canvassing Board voted 2–1 in favor of counting the discovered ballots.
Upon examination of the discovered ballots, it was further discovered that, with the exception of two ballots, none of the ballots had been cast by voters whose surnames began with the letters A, B, or C.[17] There was a further search for more ballots, and on December 17, county workers discovered a tray in a warehouse with an additional 162 previously uncounted ballots.[17] All together, 723 uncounted or improperly rejected ballots were discovered in King County during the manual hand recount.
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After all other counties submitted their recount votes, it was revealed on December 20 that at least five other counties besides King County had included ballots that had been discovered after the initial count. For example, Snohomish County included 224 missed ballots that had been discovered underneath mail trays. The outcome of the State Supreme Court hearing regarding King County's votes could have potentially affected those counties' counts as well.
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The state Democratic party claimed on December 21 that the result of the manual recount, including King County's votes, placed Gregoire ahead by eight votes across the state. Later, on December 22, the preliminary recount results put Gregoire at a ten-vote lead.
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A Pierce County Superior Court judge ruled that ballots should not be counted, but on December 22, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that counties explicitly have the ability to correct ballot consideration errors made during earlier counts. Of those 732 ballots, 566 were accepted as having valid signatures and were added to the existing total on December 23. The final results of the hand count, as of December 23,[20] had Christine Gregoire ahead by 130 votes, which was later revised to 129 when it was discovered that Thurston County had added a vote after certification had been completed.[21] Since the recount results were in favor of the party requesting the recount, the Democrats were reimbursed the recount costs they had advanced to the state.
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The Republicans presented data showing discrepancies in absentee ballot counts from 11 King County precincts. In some precincts, the county tallied more mail-in ballots than there were voters recorded as having voted by mail. In others, the opposite occurred—the county recorded more voters than ballots. The proof that ballots were fabricated for Democrats, Republican attorneys argued, is that four of the five precincts with the most excess mail-in ballots backed Gregoire. And as proof that ballots were misplaced or destroyed to harm Republicans, they pointed to the fact that four of the six precincts in which the most mail-in votes cannot be accounted for backed Republican Dino Rossi.
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he trial began on May 23, with both sides presenting their evidence of manipulation. On June 6, 2005, Judge John E. Bridges ruled that the Republican party did not provide enough evidence that the disputed votes were ineligible—or for whom they were cast—to overturn the election.[31] Judge Bridges noted that there was evidence that 1,678 votes had been illegally cast throughout the state,[32] but found that the only evidence submitted to show how those votes had been cast were sworn statements from four felons that they had voted for Rossi.[32] He stated that the judiciary should exercise restraint; "unless an election is clearly invalid, when the people have spoken, their verdict should not be disturbed by the court."[33] Nullifying the election, Bridges said, would be "the ultimate act of judicial egotism and judicial activism." He also concluded that according to his interpretation of the Washington Administrative Code, "voters who improperly cast provisional ballots should not be disenfranchised." He also rejected all claims of fraud and the Republican Party's statistical analysis, concluding that the expert testimony of the Republican party was "not helpful" and that the proportional reduction theory was not supported under any law in the state. Striking another blow against Rossi's court case, he stated that "the court is more inclined to believe that Gregoire would have prevailed under statistical analysis theory", rejecting the Rossi campaign's claim that improperly cast ballots led to Gregoire's victory.[31]
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en.wikipedia.org
As can be seen in the last excerpt above, the final result of the back and forth of recounts and "lost" ballots "found" hinged upon the "feelz" of a single judge. Who may not have been as impartial as could and should be.
This above case would appear to have been the test flight for DemocRATs on what to do and not do to steal an election.
A Republican lead of 261 votes on the first count is eventually settled into a Democrat lead(win) of 129, after months of much convoluted discovery and recounts.
EXCERPTS:
...
The 2004 Washington gubernatorial election was held on November 2, 2004. The race gained national attention for its legal twists and extremely close finish, among the closest political races in United States election history. Republican Dino Rossi was declared the winner in the initial automated count and again in a subsequent automated recount, but after a second recount done by hand, Democrat Christine Gregoire took the lead by a margin of 129 votes.
....
Gregoire led in almost all polls conducted leading up to the election, but Rossi was able to close in on her late in the race and won considerable support from Eastern Washington. He also ran much stronger than expected in Snohomish and Pierce Counties. Gregoire received strong support (nearly a three-to-two margin) from the largest county in the state, King County, which includes heavily Democratic Seattle. During the initial ballot count, the lead changed hands several times.
...
The initial result, as reported by Secretary of State Sam Reed, showed Rossi with a lead of 261 votes, well within the margin for an automatic machine recount pursuant to Washington state law (less than 0.5% and less than 2,000 votes). After a statewide recount completed on November 24, Rossi again came away with the lead, this time by 42 votes.[12]
...
After Rossi was certified as the victor on November 29, the Washington State Secretary of State said that "a manual recount was almost a certainty." This view was shared by the Gregoire campaign, with campaign spokesman Morton Brilliant saying that "if all the ballots aren't counted, we will go through the next four years with one candidate's supporters not believing the winner was legitimately elected." and that it was "worth taking three weeks to have four years of legitimacy, and that's what is at stake."[13]
...
King County Council Chairman Larry Phillips was at a Democratic Party office in Seattle on Sunday December 12, reviewing a list of voters whose absentee votes had been rejected due to signature problems, when to his surprise he found his own name listed. Phillips said he was certain he had filled out and signed his ballot correctly, and asked the county election officials to investigate the discrepancy. They discovered that Phillips' signature had somehow failed to be scanned into the election computer system after he submitted his request for an absentee ballot. Election workers claimed that they had received Phillips' absentee ballot in the mail, but they could not find his signature in the computer system to compare to the one on the ballot envelope, so they mistakenly rejected the ballot instead of following the standard procedure of checking it against the signature of Phillips' physical voter registration card that was on file. The discovery prompted King County Director of Elections Dean Logan to order his staff to search the computers to see if any other ballots had been incorrectly rejected.
Logan announced on December 13 that 561 absentee ballots in the county had been wrongly rejected due to an administrative error.[16] The next day, workers retrieving voting machines from precinct storage found an additional 12 ballots, bringing the total to 572 newly discovered ballots. Logan admitted the lost ballots were an oversight on the part of his department, and insisted that the found ballots be counted. On December 15, the King County Canvassing Board voted 2–1 in favor of counting the discovered ballots.
Upon examination of the discovered ballots, it was further discovered that, with the exception of two ballots, none of the ballots had been cast by voters whose surnames began with the letters A, B, or C.[17] There was a further search for more ballots, and on December 17, county workers discovered a tray in a warehouse with an additional 162 previously uncounted ballots.[17] All together, 723 uncounted or improperly rejected ballots were discovered in King County during the manual hand recount.
....
After all other counties submitted their recount votes, it was revealed on December 20 that at least five other counties besides King County had included ballots that had been discovered after the initial count. For example, Snohomish County included 224 missed ballots that had been discovered underneath mail trays. The outcome of the State Supreme Court hearing regarding King County's votes could have potentially affected those counties' counts as well.
...
The state Democratic party claimed on December 21 that the result of the manual recount, including King County's votes, placed Gregoire ahead by eight votes across the state. Later, on December 22, the preliminary recount results put Gregoire at a ten-vote lead.
...
A Pierce County Superior Court judge ruled that ballots should not be counted, but on December 22, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that counties explicitly have the ability to correct ballot consideration errors made during earlier counts. Of those 732 ballots, 566 were accepted as having valid signatures and were added to the existing total on December 23. The final results of the hand count, as of December 23,[20] had Christine Gregoire ahead by 130 votes, which was later revised to 129 when it was discovered that Thurston County had added a vote after certification had been completed.[21] Since the recount results were in favor of the party requesting the recount, the Democrats were reimbursed the recount costs they had advanced to the state.
...
The Republicans presented data showing discrepancies in absentee ballot counts from 11 King County precincts. In some precincts, the county tallied more mail-in ballots than there were voters recorded as having voted by mail. In others, the opposite occurred—the county recorded more voters than ballots. The proof that ballots were fabricated for Democrats, Republican attorneys argued, is that four of the five precincts with the most excess mail-in ballots backed Gregoire. And as proof that ballots were misplaced or destroyed to harm Republicans, they pointed to the fact that four of the six precincts in which the most mail-in votes cannot be accounted for backed Republican Dino Rossi.
...
he trial began on May 23, with both sides presenting their evidence of manipulation. On June 6, 2005, Judge John E. Bridges ruled that the Republican party did not provide enough evidence that the disputed votes were ineligible—or for whom they were cast—to overturn the election.[31] Judge Bridges noted that there was evidence that 1,678 votes had been illegally cast throughout the state,[32] but found that the only evidence submitted to show how those votes had been cast were sworn statements from four felons that they had voted for Rossi.[32] He stated that the judiciary should exercise restraint; "unless an election is clearly invalid, when the people have spoken, their verdict should not be disturbed by the court."[33] Nullifying the election, Bridges said, would be "the ultimate act of judicial egotism and judicial activism." He also concluded that according to his interpretation of the Washington Administrative Code, "voters who improperly cast provisional ballots should not be disenfranchised." He also rejected all claims of fraud and the Republican Party's statistical analysis, concluding that the expert testimony of the Republican party was "not helpful" and that the proportional reduction theory was not supported under any law in the state. Striking another blow against Rossi's court case, he stated that "the court is more inclined to believe that Gregoire would have prevailed under statistical analysis theory", rejecting the Rossi campaign's claim that improperly cast ballots led to Gregoire's victory.[31]
....
2004 Washington gubernatorial election - Wikipedia
As can be seen in the last excerpt above, the final result of the back and forth of recounts and "lost" ballots "found" hinged upon the "feelz" of a single judge. Who may not have been as impartial as could and should be.
This above case would appear to have been the test flight for DemocRATs on what to do and not do to steal an election.
A Republican lead of 261 votes on the first count is eventually settled into a Democrat lead(win) of 129, after months of much convoluted discovery and recounts.
