December 22, 2004
Well-done, destroyers of Democracy. Bravo.
Well, the election in Washington State is very close to being stolen. If you've ever wondered what would've happened if the Democrats had been allowed to recount and recount and recount the votes in Florida in 2000, look toward Washington State. Reading the story of the ridiculousness that went on in the state, I am continually amazed that any of it is legal. Democratic operatives actually visited voters to determine their intent. Sound like a joke? John Fund (who is all over this complicated story)writes 'A local judge allowed Democratic Party officials to obtain the names and addresses of 723 people who had cast provisional ballots but were in danger of not being counted because of mismatching or missing signatures. Democratic officials then contacted voters and asked them who they had voted for in the race for governor. If the answer was Ms. Gregoire, the voter was allowed to correct his or her signature and thus have their ballot counted. Republicans belatedly began contacting their voters. The result was a net gain of some 400 votes for Ms. Gregoire. Mr. Rossi's lead fell to 261 votes.' Hundreds of votes were somehow 'found' in ballot boxes that had not been secured in the time since the election. A quick summary from the Fund article:
The state began a mandatory machine recount of all ballots. But in King County the recount went beyond running the ballots through the counting machines. Officials there "enhanced" some 300 votes that had been rejected by the machines, in some cases altering them with white-out or filling in the ovals on the optical scan ballots. Again, these additional ballots benefited Ms. Gregoire. In 38 of the state's 39 counties, only 208 net votes were added to either Mr. Rossi or Ms. Gregoire in the recount. Then came King County, which represents 30% of the state's votes. Ms. Gregoire, who won 58% of the overall King County vote, harvested a net gain of 245 votes--more than the changes in the rest of the state for both candidates combined. At that point, with Mr. Rossi holding only a 42-vote lead, Democrats put up the money to pay for a third recount that would be conducted by hand, a process that most election observers, including those in charge of King County, view as less accurate than a machine count.It didn't take long for new ballots to be discovered. On Dec. 7, more than a month after the election, King County said it had found 573 absentee ballots which had been rejected because they lacked or had improper signatures. A couple of days later, another 22 ballots were found hidden in voting machines that had been put into storage. None of these ballots had been stored in sealed and secured boxes. Election officials are usually leery of counting votes that haven't been kept under constant lock and key.
Nonetheless, the Democratic controlled King County canvassing board rejected the Republican county prosecutor's advice not to count the 573 ballots. Then someone noticed that the list of disputed ballots did not include any voters whose names began with A or B. Another treasure hunt turned up 150 more votes that had been mistakenly put into storage.
In short, it's a shameful debacle.
The first link in this post is to MyDD.com, a big liberal site. In another post, they quote Daily Kos: 'If King County produces new votes at the rate established by 38 counties (5.86/10000), its total will come to 526 new votes. Gregoire would need to earn only 53.8% of them for the win.' Produces? How does a county produce votes? Even before I got into politics full-time, I knew what vote counting looked like. I've seen how voting booths get shut down at the end of the night. If there is a ballot box missing, you've got a big problem. This isn't something that could go unnoticed for weeks. It is something that is realized immediately, and if it isn't then you could be assured there were shenanigans.
Look, right-wingers of the blogosphere, I know you're sick of elections. I know it's Christmas. I know Washington State is allllll the way over there and who really cares who governs them (sorry cutie Candace, I'm making a point)? But, this is going to set a dangerous examples for future elections. If they can't win the election the fair way, they will sue their way into office. If we are silent now, we will suffer later. So get on this story. Make a lot of noise. Don't let them cheat and win.
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"Don't let them cheat and win" they should have to lie to win the way Republicans do.
Posted by: Dawn Summers at December 22, 2004 10:59 AMYou dont have anonymous ballot paper? (!)
Posted by: Monjo at December 22, 2004 11:07 AMGet. The. Hell. Out. Of. Here.
Democrats claim victory by 8 votes: http://www.suntimes.com/output/elect/cst-nws-recount22.html
Here's my part:
http://www.therightwingconspiracy.org/index.php?p=624
Claudio
Posted by: Claudio at December 22, 2004 11:34 AMOutrageous.
But after the completely unlawful recount in Florida in 2000, nothing surprises me.
Posted by: Dorian at December 22, 2004 11:40 AMIt is interesting that even though King County will not produce its total till this afternoon, somehow the Democratic Party knew the tally last night.
Posted by: Michael C at December 22, 2004 12:01 PMwhat law did the recount break, dorian?
Posted by: Dawn Summers at December 22, 2004 12:06 PMDawn--
Election law is decided by the legislature of a particular state. In Florida, the law said clearly that the ballot counts for each county had to be turned in to be certified "7 days" after Election Day. It didn't say they "may be" turned in 7 days after Election Day. It didn't say "might be" turned in 7 days after Election Day. It said "must be" turned in 7 days after Election Day...But the Florida Supreme Court, in one of the most rogue decisions imposed by a court in judicial history, "interpreted" the "7" to be "17" and allowed for a 10 day extention. It sounds like a joke. But no. That started a Constitutional crisis that eventually had to be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Posted by: Dorian at December 22, 2004 01:27 PMDorian,
The purpose of the judiciary is to interpret legislation -- so by definition a court doesn't "break a law" by interpreting it. There interpretation can be overturned by a high court, as happened in 2000, however that is the legal process at work -- not an illegal constitutional crises coup. That is the constitution working the way it was intended.
Posted by: Dawn Summers at December 22, 2004 01:50 PMLook, sweetie, I know nobody cares about what happens up here - h., my
rep is Baghdad Jim McDermott. When you get down to it, San Francisco
has nothing on Seattle. Up here, we might have even less shame.
The self-righteousness has been so ugly - there is a "win at all
costs" mentality that I saw voter registrars using back with the "go
ahead, register at two addresses" strategy earlier this year. The
Democrats like to pretend that all our Republicans are either
Microsoft employees or hicks from Eastern Washington and have no
tolerance for anyone living in, say, Clark County, Snohomish County,
or (God forbid) King County who might be voting Republican (especially if
they're Black!). Must be some kind of mistake.
But you'd never get any idea in our press that there's something
genuinely wrong. In short, our state government has been a sham for so
long that part of me knows it doesn't matter. But in the long run, I
know I shouldn't be so passive about the forced takeover of our
government by this shamelessness. But I decided years ago it wasn't
going to be my battle. Good luck trying to rescue this political
hellhole...
The purpose of the judiciary is to interpret legislation -- so by definition a court doesn't "break a law" by interpreting it. There interpretation can be overturned by a high court, as happened in 2000, however that is the legal process at work -- not an illegal constitutional crises coup. That is the constitution working the way it was intended.
No. That's NOT the way it is intended.
Read the Constitution. This was a Presidential Election so I do mean the Federal Constitution. Article II, Section I, Clause II: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress ..."
In other words, when it comes to a Presidential election, the State Legislatures have the exclusive first and last say. Therefore, the Florida Supreme Court violated the Constitution by putting itself where it was barred by the Constitution. It had absolutely no right to do so.
Posted by: Martin A. Knight at December 22, 2004 03:09 PMI thought the number of recounts, and not the number of Electors appointed, was the issue here.
Posted by: Shawn at December 22, 2004 03:27 PMShawn -- the Constitutional excerpt isn't talking about the number or Electors appointed, but the manner in which they are appointed. The number is determined constitutionally by the number of Congressional representatives of a state, not by the state itself. According to the Constitution, the manner is regulated solely by the state legislature. And the state legislature of Florida, according to Dorian, enacted a law defining the regulation of the manner of appointment such that the ballot counts must be turned in within seven days. Thus, constitutionally, the state Supreme Court has no right to reinterpret that law such that the leeway becomes seventeen days.
All right.
Thus, constitutionally, the state Supreme Court has no right to reinterpret that law such that the leeway becomes seventeen days.
Hence the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in and reversed that decision. The Constitution still works as intended.
Posted by: Shawn at December 22, 2004 06:22 PMDawn--
The job of the court is to interpret the laws. Not make them. Not change them. If a law on the books doesn't mesh with the constitution, the court has a right to strike it down. But not to unilaterally change it as they see fit and usurp the power of the legislature. It was such a blatant violation of separation of powers that it was unanimously condemned by the Supreme Court.
Posted by: Dorian at December 22, 2004 09:01 PMSCOFla wrote a terrible decision. It was difficult to reconcile with the text of the statute. On the other hand, all that they really ruled was that if a recount was required, an artificial deadline that made it impossible to complete it didn't pass constitutional muster. Had SCOFla's decision been followed, the tangible result would have been a recount, the preferred way of dealing with elections as close as Florida in 2004.
SCOTUS, on the other hand, wrote a decision so bad that they tried to pretend that it had no precedential value. The Court had no standing, found standing on an equal protection ground so disconnected from the prior EP jurisprudence of the judges in the majority that I don't think even Scalia can repeat the rationale with a straight face. That decision PREVENTED a recount designed to accurately count the votes in Florida.
To recap: Florida's bad decision was within the interpretive authority of the Court and at least had the benefit of seeking the truth. (Yes, truth spiced with "I hope Gore wins the recount," but there was at least uncertainty at the time they issued their decision.) SCOTUS's bad decision was outside the Court's authority (SCOTUS doesn't have jurisdiction over state court interpretations of state law) and locked in a result for their guy without allowing the recount to continue.
Bad judicial legerdemain on all sides, but while the Florida decision was arguably worse in the abstract, the SCOTUS's decision will have far worse effect on jurisprudence in the future.
Posted by: ugarte at December 23, 2004 02:24 AMThe Supreme Court of the United States rules the Florida recount unconstitutional by a 7-2 split. It could hardly be said they were helping "their man." The 5-4 split myth was only their decision about whether to extend the deadline for electors to be sent to Washington. So, to recap, 7 of 9 justices found the Florida shenanigans unconstitutional.
Posted by: Dorian at December 23, 2004 12:55 PM
