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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (90666)	12/14/2004 11:05:42 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793717

Sound Politics - Recount Observer Report From a Republican friend who's been observing the festivities at the Ukraine County manual recount in Tukwila: Today, Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2004 marked the completion of the sorting of all absentee ballots into their proper precincts (except for those mis-sorted). It also marked the “discovery” of more “previously uncounted but valid ballots,” of which King County seems to have an inexhaustible supply. These latest ballots bring the current crop to 577. The latest additions were supposedly discovered when someone was poking through the Election Department’s warehouse and just happened to notice some absentee ballots left in the stands which housed the AccuVote machines at the polling places. The ballots were brought to the attention of the manager of the Department’s 1st South facility shortly after the election was certified. She set them aside until today. Now they are being sent to the canvas board. Charging fraud may be premature but it is clear to those of us who have seen some of the innter workings that the King County Elections office is completely ignorant of concepts such as inventory control. Incidentally, this morning some of the Democrats were explaining that these mysterious ballots keep appearing because the Republicans in the Elections office keep hiding them. It is an interesting theory, but lacks just one element – Republicans in Ron Sim’s Elections office! These people are from the same wing of the Party that believes computers are a Republican plot to steal elections. Whether this is by design or through incompetent management is an open question. Tomorrow workers will re-check the sorts done in the last two days and combine them into complete packs of absentee ballots for each precinct - with the exception of any “previously uncounted but valid ballots” that may be appear later. The vote count will resume on Thursday at the Tukwila facility. If you are wondering about the accuracy of the hand count, think for a minute about what we are doing. The process is the equivalent of drawing a spreadsheet by hand. The spreadsheet has about 900,000 rows, each row representing a ballot, and 7 columns, one each for Gregoire, Rossi, Bennett, Write Ins, Under Votes, Over Votes, and Ballots for the Canvas Board. Then, once the 900,000 rows have been filled in by hand, each column is added by hand, except various portions of the rows are being separately added by 160 people, in 80 teams, and then combined at “data entry” stations. The term “data entry” helps create the illusion that there is some validity to the numbers being generated by this process. My recount stats at this writing show no net change in Rossi's percentage lead. In other words, all of the ballots that have been added have fallen proportionally for both candidates as per their respective share of the vote in the machine recount in the reporting counties. If all of the new votes fall to both candidates as they did in the machine recount, Rossi's lead at the end will still be 0.0015% as it was in the machine recount. I calculate that the probability of a Rossi win, assuming a fair process with variations attributable only to chance, is now 94%. The above report and similar stories suggest that we may see an outcome in Ukraine County that cannot be attributed to either reliable counting or chance. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 14, 2004 07:10 PM Categories: 2004 Governor's Race