Here in Washington we’ve got somebody sitting in the governor’s office who may very well not have won the election. Her alleged margin of victory was 129 votes, and there were several eyebrow-raising events in the course of the election and the subsequent counts and recounts.
For one thing, a batch of 400+ provisional ballots was counted before verification of eligibility, in a county that went for the alleged victor. There’s a discrepancy of 1800+ between the number of voters who signed-in at the polls and the number of ballots cast. There were at least 8 batches of ballots found after the initial count was finished on, most of which weren’t properly secured. A number of dead people are known to have voted, as well as a number of felons.
Consequently, this contest cries out for a close examination and a proper hearing of the evidence. It may very well be — I think it’s likely — that the election results should be set aside and a re-vote held with adult supervision.
But this is a scary prospect to a small but vocal minority of Washingtonians terrified with the knowledge that their fellow citizens chose a Republican governor, so they’re stonewalling like mad and doing all they can to whip up partisan resentment over the hearing due the people who voted for the alleged loser.
Part of this obfuscation comes from practitioners of dodgy math, and part from practitioners of dodgy law. Here are a couple of clues for my colleagues:
1. In statistics, two sources of uncertainty don’t cancel each other out, they add.
2. Statute isn’t the sum of law, it’s the beginning. Precedent, case law, and common law are the rest. When a statute says “but not limited to” it means it, and “illegal” is not a term of art.
Oddly, the people who are screaming the loudest that there’s nothing to see in this election by way of fraud are the same ones who complained non-stop from 2000 to the present about the presidential race in Florida in 2000. I think we all know what that means.
Sound Politics has unearthed a mountain of circumstantial evidence to the effect that votes were manufactured in Seattle. We need to find out if there is more than the appearance of fraud. Neither side should be afraid of the truth, unless they have something to hide.
LOL! It’s the folks at “Sound Politics” and their talk radio megaphones, gleefully provided to them by demagogues that are screaming loudest.
Get over yourself.
I said “screaming the loudest that there?s nothing to see in this election by way of fraud…”.
I know it’s a long sentence, but really.
Hey Richard:
You forgot your side’s meme, which (screamed) is “We’re not really sure who won.”
As I recall the dead people who voted voted Republican…
BTW, you haven’t exactly given a reason – heck you can search back case -law, as to why an “illegal” vote might be construed any other way than a vote resulting from a deliberate act of malfeasance….go ahead, if you’re so “sure” that a “proper hearing of the evidence” of the “evidence” would result in a “re-vote,” go ahead, make our day, show us the proof.
Or admit you are just blustering.
BTW, your friend Sharkansky’s attempting to take the “looking for malfeasance” tack now, I see, but he’s got a lot of tough sledding to go on that one.
It’s not too hard to figure out: if somebody who’s not eligible to vote casts a vote, that’s an illegal vote. And if somebody who’s eligible votes more than once, that’s also an illegal vote. The concept of “eligible voter” is a hard one, I know, but it yields to analysis.
So here’s what happened: the votes were cast and counted, and Rossi won. On the first recount, King County found some additional ballots, narrowing Rossi’s margin. Then on the second recount, King County found even more ballots, reversing the outcome of the election. King County ultimately produced 1860 more votes than voters, not surprising given the timing of these discoveries. One remedy is simply to deduct 1860 from King’s total, taking them away from the candidates in proportion to the total votes cast. And we should do something similar in the rest of the state.
Then there’s no need for a re-vote, because the good guy will have triumphed. There is precedent for this kind of actuarial adjustment to the tally, from Dade County, FL, of all places.
I’m still waiting for your evidence that the law imnplies anything other than malfeasance, and, while I’m at it, evidence that the events you spin are, in fact, malfeasance (other than the well-documented case of the dead Repub. voting for Rossi).
1860 more votes than voters in King County is malfeasance. While there is always discrepancy, we should expect it to be more on the order of the year 2000 figure, 20 votes. And no, the error rate in Spokane wasn’t larger, it was smaller allowing for “courtesy ballots” to replace spoiled ballots that weren’t part of the final tally.
No, I’m afraid not in and of itself, not in any sense a lawyer would use and pass the giggle test. Malfeasance implies some active, deliberate, unjust, intentional wrongdoing.
So now you’re pretending to be a lawyer? I think there’s a law against that.
The concept that’s emerged in this election is “distributed vote fraud”, where malfeasance is committed by a large group of people acting autonomously – precinct captains, spouses of dead people, election clerks, felons, and moveaways.
The remedy isn’t necessarily a re-vote. Deducting 1860 from King apportioned between the candidates appropriately works for me.