Don't Count Rossi Out
A stolen election in Washington state? Not if bloggers can help it.
John Fund wrote an excellent story on Democrat Christine Gregoire's extraordinary attempt to steal Washington's governorship from Dino Rossi, the Republican who won the office before Donks recounted King County ballots until they were able to hand her a 129 vote victory. Here are some of the salient points that judges pondering whether to order a new election must consider.
--At least 1,200 more votes were counted in Seattle's King County than the number of individual voters who can be accounted for.
--More than 300 military personnel who were sent their absentee ballots too late to return them have signed affidavits saying they intended to vote for Mr. Rossi.
--1 out of 20 ballots in King County that officials felt were marked unclearly were "enhanced" with Wite-Out or pens so that some had their original markings obliterated.
--In King County at least 348 unverified provisional ballots were fed directly into vote-counting machines.
--King County elections director Dean Logan acknowledges that there were 1200 phantom ballots counted, but states "that does not clearly indicate that the election would have turned out differently."
--In Precinct 1823 in downtown Seattle, 527, or 70%, of the 763 registered voters used 500 Fourth Avenue--the King County administration building--as their residential address.
--A poll taken last week by Seattle's KING-TV found that by a 20-point margin state residents back a new election, and by 53% to 36% they don't think Mr. Rossi should concede.
I will be surprised if Gregoire is sworn in as Governor tomorrow, but if she is my personal hope is that citizens interested in stopping the Mexicanization of American government burn their Capital building down and hang, oh say, 1000 Democrats as a warning. There is a more peaceful possibility however.
"[I]n Minnesota after the 1962 election for governor there. Republican Elmer Anderson won a squeaker and was sworn in, but a recount of disputed ballots ground on. A hundred days into Mr. Anderson's term, a panel of three state judges ruled that Democrat Karl Rolvaag had actually won by 91 votes. To end the legal wrangling, Mr. Anderson dropped any appeals and calmly left office, allowing Mr. Rolvaag to move into the governor's mansion."
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