"Smoking Gun"
Sound Politics
The Seattle Times' David Postman credits me with finding what could be the "smoking gun" to overturn the election:
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The latest questions about King County came after the elections office released on Wednesday a list of all registered voters in the county, broken down by those who voted and those who didn't. The Republican Party, among other groups, had requested the information as part of its investigation of voting irregularities.
Conservative blogger Stefan Sharkansky pointed out the discrepancy Wednesday, and by yesterday it was Topic A among Rossi backers and Republican Party officials.
Party Chairman Chris Vance said it could be the "smoking gun" needed to overturn the election.
The number of King County ballots counted in the final tally was 899,199 — 3,539 more than the number of participating voters reported in the county's list.
>>>
(I reported that here).
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I'll personally hold off on calling anything I've found a smoking gun. But the unanswered questions keep piling up. Scroll down to Precinct 3301.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky
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Precinct 3301
Precinct FED 30-3301, or simply Precinct 3301, is located in Federal Way in south King County off I-5. I've never been there and I don't know much about it except that it helps illustrate why this election, in Dino Rossi's words, is a "total mess" and needs to be nullified.
Now that King County has released the precinct canvass for the manual recount, we can see how Precinct 3301 voted in each of the three counts
Count Gregoire Rossi Bennett Write-in Undervote Overvote Total
Initial 191 142 14 0 8 0 355
Machine 191 143 14 0 8 0 356
Manual 191 141 13 0 7 0 352
An interesting thing about the manual recount, which a lot of people, including myself, didn't pay enough attention to, is that in addition to the 566 magical mystery ballots that were added on Dec. 23, King County also added 59 other unexplained magical mystery ballots to their vote count on Dec. 22.
In fact, it wasn't as simple as merely adding 59 ballots, they actually added a net total of 325 ballots to some precincts and removed a net total of 266 ballots from other precincts.
Precinct 3301 is one of the precincts that lost ballots. How can this happen? It's not that marks were interpreted differently. It's that pieces of paper disappeared in one count, or only existed in somebody's imagination in an earlier count. We're assured that in every case the diligent election workers tallied and retallied and checked each others numbers and that their ballot counts were perfect! Every time they changed they were perfect! The process is perfect, except for those four annoying pieces of paper that somehow disappeared from Precinct 3301 during the manual recount, and the other 262 pieces of paper that somehow disappeared from all those other precincts, and the 325 other pieces of paper that magically materialized somewhere else.
We know a little bit about what happened in the machine recount. A new ABSENTEE ballot for Dino Rossi somehow materialized in this precinct. But we don't yet know what kinds of ballots were lost in the "more accurate" manual recount, because the precinct canvass for the manual recount doesn't include that information.
But fortunately, this time we now also know how many voters voted in Precinct 3301. The King County voter file tells us that 354 citizens voted in Precinct 3301 -- 252 Absentee, 85 Polling Place and 17 Provisional. 354 voters cast valid ballots, of which only 352 can be located.
Precinct 3301 isn't the only precinct that has more voters than ballots, it only came up on the top of my list because it lost the most ballots in the manual recount. In fact, 684 out of 2,616 precincts have more voters than ballots, for a total of 1,512 ballotless voters. Were these ballots simply lost? Did the elections office (contrary to instructions) release a file that reflects changes in voters' addresses and precincts that have occurred in the weeks since the election? Or what? We may never know.
And that's just one more example of why this election is a "total mess" and why we need to set it aside and move on to a revote.
UPDATE: I thought to cross-reference the Dec. 29 voter file against the Nov. 1 voter file to see if any voters have changed precincts. Some have. One more strike against KC Elections. I specifically asked for the voter list to describe the voters as of the day of the election. Inter-precinct migration explains only 1 of the Precinct 3301's 2 ballotless voters. There are still at least 353 voters who cast ballots in Precinct 3301 on the day of the election, but only 352 of these ballots were counted. I'll work on a comprehensive analysis of all precincts.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky
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