Count Every Vote, Legal Or Illegal
That's the position of the New York Times on Washington's gubernatorial election and San Diego's mayoralty election. In the San Diego case, the illegality of the ballots in question does not appear to be in doubt, but the New York Times wants them counted anyway. The legality of including additional votes in a re-recount of Washington's gubernatorial race is not clear to me; I suspect that including them is, in fact, not legal.
But that wouldn't matter to the New York Times editorial board. If they favor counting illegal votes (to help a leftist candidate) in San Diego, I think we can reasonably conclude that they would favor counting illegal votes (to help a leftist candidate) in Washington, too.
Would the New York Times favor counting illegal votes if they helped Republican candidates? I doubt it. The newspaper did an extensive investigation of military ballots in the 2000 Florida dispute hoping to establish that some had been cast illegally. (A few had, or at least that's what the investigation concluded.) The newspaper did not do an extensive investigation of the other side of the question, whether military ballots had been improperly disqualified. (Some had.)
The background of a recent addition to the Times editorial board, Carolyn Curiel, may be of interest for those wondering just how partisan the New York Times is.
She served as special assistant to the president and senior presidential speechwriter in President Clinton's first term, . . .
There's a woman who can instill confidence in Republicans.
The New York Times is not the only newspaper to argue that illegal votes should be counted; Mark Trahant, editorial page editor of the Seattle PI, took the same position in this column.
How the editorial board at the Times, or Mark Trahant, expect Republicans to have confidence in a system that counts illegal votes, most of them going to Democratic candidates, is beyond me. Maybe neither have enough contact with Republicans to understand that point.
I have thought for some years that newspapers are one of the biggest obstacles we have to real election reform, reform that would lead to systems that count, not every vote, but every legal vote. Sadly, this editorial and this column provide two more reasons for thinking that newspapers are part of the problem.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
Posted by Jim Miller at 02:08 PM | Comments (5)
Categories: 2004 Governor's Race
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