First of all, democracy via the ballet box in this country is fragile. Look at this mess in Washington State.
A friend caught this on NPR this morning. Some King County election official disqualified a number of ballots because their local computer did not have electonic copies of signatures for all those voting stored. This was apparently figured out by the local Democratic party chief who found his own vote among those disqualified.
According to a local news report, “A King County election official says his board takes ‘full responsibility’ for mistakenly rejecting 561 absentee ballots in the Washington governor’s race. Elections Director Dean Logan says it happened because signatures on the ballots weren’t on file in the county’s computer system. He says they’ll be counted soon.”
What does that mean? Is he resigning and checking himself into jail? If it’s just 561 signatures, why isn’t he sitting down right now and counting them? This is criminal idiocy.
What is really interesting is that before the recount, Republican Dino Rossi led Democrat Christine Gregoire by 42 votes. This report says that Rossi has picked up 46 votes in the recount thus far, giving him a potential 88 vote lead in the race.
According to National Public Radio this morning (transcript not yet available), Christine Gregoire has an 89 point net lead over Rossi among the disputed King County ballots (so someone apparently counted them).
If things stayed the same — and there were no more shenannigans discovered — Christine Gregoire would beat Dino Rossi by one vote.
Anyone for mandatory sentencing for ballot tampering?
— Steve Clemons
