That was the wrong ballot to lose
Thanks to Stefan's trusty voter database, most Washingtonians can quickly check to see if their ballot was counted in the last election, a resource that King County itself has not provided directly.
Lt. Bryan Suits, recently home from combat in Iraq, used it to discover that his general election absentee ballot was not counted. Actually, what he saw in the database search result was a hash mark... curious, he called King County elections, who confirmed that although his vote was counted in the primary, he was not credited with voting in the November election.
You ask: "maybe it didn't arrive in time?" Well, to ensure that it was counted, he had sent the completed absentee ballot to his wife (a police officer, by the way) who made sure it was in the postal system well in advance of election day.
Perhaps the post office lost his ballot? How many absentee ballots do you suppose the post office loses during a presidential election? Probably more than either the post office or election officials want to admit. Did Diebold lose the ballot?
Will the long-awaited audit logs show how many pieces of mail come in one door from the post office, and out the other to King County? Where is King County's Absent Ballot Audit Trail (which would show the date any particular ballot was received, if in fact it was received) when you need it?
Remember the 93 ballots discovered on April Fool's Day? Lt. Suits believes he voted in an Issaquah precinct from which two of these ballots were found. Hmm. [Update: he has determined his was not one of these. Still, King County won't tell him what happened to his, and hasn't tabulated those new ballots.]
Oh, incidentally, Bryan is back at his job as a talk show host on KVI 570, nightly 6-9 pm. During his time in Iraq, he gave boots-on-the-ground reports to KVI, Fox News, Tony Snow's radio show, BBC, and other media. Of all people to be disenfranchised... they picked the wrong soldier. And his wife knows a thing or two about law enforcement: Suits was active duty military-- his vote was quite probably mishandled by the elections department, and he has an unimpeachable witness to that possibility.
This is now a federal matter, and the FBI can investigate it.
That's the first call he's going to place tomorrow.
King County may have just reaped yet another whirlwind.
(Updated and edited 4/7 )
Brings back memories of the "Felons vote, soldiers don't" chant, doesn't it? |
