Hyperbole, nonsense, and outright BS regarding the governor's race

So it's been quite awhile since I updated my blog, and much has happened since, particularly with regard to the governor's race here in Washington state. On the first tabulation of ballots, Rossi had a 261-vote lead out of 3.5 million ballots cast. This triggered a manual recount (re-running all ballots through the machines). This ended with Rossi having a 42-vote lead. At this time, the state Democrats raised the needed $700,000 for a hand recount. The hand recount reversed the results, with Gregoire ending up with a 10-vote lead before a number of disputed ballots were counted (a pile of ballots that had been set aside to be tabulated which had been forgotten). When those ballots were added, Gregoire had a 130-vote lead.

Since then, the state Republicans, who had been pressing Gregoire frantically to concede because "this long drawn-out process is embarrassing for the state" have been agitating to ... draw the process out further. They're now claiming there must have been massive vote fraud in order for the results to be reversed. Their pod people are dutifully repeating the party's latest meme, which is that the voters have "lost all faith in the election process" and the "process is so flawed that it has to be repeated." That last one, which I'm seeing in every Republican editorial and letter to the editor, is so incoherent as to be ludicrous. They want to repeat a process that's horribly flawed? To what end? If it was broken the first time, what good does it do to repeat a broken process?

Throughout all this, I have to say I've developed a much stronger respect for the integrity of our Secretary of State, Sam Reed. He's resisted unrelenting pressure from both sides to tweak the process or change it midstream, and has stuck firmly to the letter of the law regarding the recounts and certification of elections by counties. In so doing, he may have cut his own throat with the state Republicans, who are furious with him for not somehow managing to subvert the recount in King County (it was the King County recount that reversed the election result).

I posted this in response to another diatribe on a mailing list about the recount, about how "flawed" the process was and how much "fraud" must have occurred.

I would give the articles cited (note: this is in reference to articles cited from the revotewa.com site, which was set up by the state Republicans - both articles are from right-wing sources) more credence had they not all come out of Chris Vance's camp. He's not exactly a disinterested observer.

There's a lot of outright BS being spread about how flawed this election was. In fact, every election has flaws; this one simply showed every glitch because the outcome was so close.I have many, many friends who worked as election observers for both the required machine recount and the paid-for manual recount. Every ballot that went through the manual recount process - EVERY SINGLE SOLITARY ONE - was seen by at least five sets of eyes, including at least one Republican observer and one Democratic observer. ONLY ballots which met the approval of ALL the observers and the ballot-counting committee of three were tabulated. "Enhancing" ballots is permitted by law in any case where all the committee members and observers agree that voter intent is clear. In most cases, this happened when someone put an X in the circle instead of completely darkening it, circled the candidate's name, circled the party, or otherwise did not follow the ballot instructions. The voting machines kicked those ballots out, or did not correctly tabulate them. Every county has laws on the books permitting the elections committee to "enhance" those ballots to permit them to pass through the machine correctly. There is nothing sinister about this. I might also point out that just as many ballots were "discovered" and "enhanced" for Rossi as for Gregoire - this did not happen only in King County and it did not happen only with Democratic ballots. And I might point out, when all ballots were tabulated MINUS the found ballots in King County, Chris still won, albeit by only 10 votes. Many of those 735 found ballots in King County were votes for Rossi, too.

The Republicans are trying to stir up public indignation with innuendo and outright nonsense. State law as it currently stands does not provide for a revote, thus to do so is not possible - as most of those who've contributed to the revote website know perfectly well. They're simply trying to frame the debate. Unfortunately, they're succeeding. The election recounts were more than 99.99% accurate, according to (Republican) Secretary of State Sam Reed - that's about as accurate as you're going to ever get, in any election, ever. Certainly proposals for IRV or revotes are in order - for future elections. Otherwise, there will be a mandatory revote as permitted by law - in November 2008.

My personal preference would be to throw both these two out and revote with all new candidates, since neither got 50% of the vote. However, the law does not allow for that. Let's stick to what's currently permitted by state law, and if we don't like it, work to change it for the next election cycle. I would like to know, however, what exactly it is that people think is so grotesquely flawed that it requires immediate reform.