What Can We Learn from Washington State's Gubernatorial Race?

Adam's Apple

Senior Member
Apr 25, 2004
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Washington State's Gubernatorial Race
By DEROY MURDOCK, Scripps Howard News Service
03-FEB-05

After casting ballots in widely applauded elections on Jan. 30, Iraqis dipped their digits in ink to prevent multiple voting, then pointed their purple fingers toward a brighter future.

Ukrainians cleanly elected Viktor Yushchenko president Dec. 26, after he lost an earlier, fraud-encrusted runoff. Afghans elected President Hamid Karzai in a properly run Oct. 9 vote.

Too bad Washington state's latest election failed Iraqi, Ukrainian and Afghan standards. The Nov. 2 gubernatorial race remains murky due to illegitimate ballots, others that were miscounted, and still more that emerged from ... who knows where? This morass is prosecution-grade proof that America's inadequate voting system screams for modernization.

Democrat Christine Gregoire took office Jan. 12 after edging Republican Dino Rossi in a third recount by 129 of the 2.8 million votes cast. Rossi has sued for a revote, a reasonable request given that the number of dodgy ballots exceeds Gregoire's victory margin.

Through Jan. 28, Washington's GOP (www.wsrp.org) said it found 996 illegal votes, "and we expect this number to grow in the days ahead."

This figure includes:

_ 489 votes by ineligible felons. Dean Logan, Democratic election director in Seattle's King County, seems unoffended by ex-offenders who may not vote but do so anyway. He told the Seattle Times: "I don't think it's the responsibility of the election administrators to essentially do background checks on registered voters."

_ 437 provisional ballots cast by voters of dubious eligibility. Rather than isolate these for later evaluation, 348 of these were fed into voting machines. "These provisional ballots could have been cast by unregistered voters or people who'd voted more than once," Mary Lane, Rossi's communications director, tells me, "but now we'll never know because they're in the general sea of ballots."

_ 44 ballots cast by dead voters. Some of these were apparent clerical errors, such as poll workers confusing live voters with their similarly named dead relatives. Other cases were less forgivable, such as Doris McFarland, who told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that she voted on behalf of her 92-year-old husband, who died Oct. 7.

"I called up the elections board and said, 'Can I do it because he wanted me to vote,' " McFarland explained. "The person ... said, 'Well, who would know?' " How heartwarming. How criminal.

_ 26 voters cast multiple ballots, 20 strictly in-state and six others inside and outside Washington.

_ The pro-market Evergreen Freedom Foundation (www.effwa.org) reports that, as of Dec. 30, five counties discovered at least 8,419 more votes than voters who had voted. On Jan. 18, that number inexplicably dropped to 2,200.

_ Also unusual: Some 500 voters claimed the King County Administration building as their legal residence.

Washingtonians deserve a governor chosen by transparent revote. Earth's sole remaining superpower, meanwhile, should use this fiasco to exercise humility and adopt admirable voting procedures from overseas.

First, Congress should require clean voter rolls before every biennial federal election. If states need assistance to purge non-citizens, felons, the relocated and the dead from registration records, Uncle Sam should scrap some farm subsidies and underwrite this vital improvement.

Second, electoral officials should inspect every voter's photo identification. If Afghan, Iraqi and Ukrainian voters must show a picture ID, what's our excuse? Some Democrats bellyache that this would frighten blacks from the polls. Please! Such condescending rubbish assumes blacks lack a workplace ID, bank cards, driver's licenses or student ID. Keep it simple: Expect blacks, like everyone else, to vote with the same ID we show to board commercial jets.

Third, U.S. elections should require each voter to dip a finger in ink after balloting. This will stymie those who vote early and often. A purple index finger also offers a subtle civics advertisement: "I voted. Have you?"

Finally, absentee ballots are easily abused. Deceased Americans and Alzheimer's-ravaged seniors magically vote, thanks to relatives and caregivers who never see poll workers. Absentee ballots should be limited to mentally competent shut-ins and voters away on Election Day, not just impatient citizens who want to make this solemn civic ritual as mundane as ordering early from a mail-order catalog.

America proudly leads the rest of the world in many spheres, but our vote procedures are a global disgrace. During the 21 months until the 2006 mid-term election, officials should work diligently to guarantee every state a ballot system at least as reliable as Iraq's.
 
why dont we dip our fingers in ink to prevent election fraud? it will definately give democrats a more difficult time to vote in multiple location.
 
Do you think we would have enough purple ink to cover parking lots, vacant lots, gravestones, etc.? You get my drift.
 
Adam's Apple said:
Do you think we would have enough purple ink to cover parking lots, vacant lots, gravestones, etc.? You get my drift.

Well then they couldnt vote:)
 
I was just joshin' with you, Avatar. We certainly do need to develop procedures that would prevent fraudulent votes from entering into our election process. If they can come up with dipping a finger in indelible ink in Iraq, why can't we tighten up our own election procedures so that those who try to vote illegally aren't able to? Is that an impossibility? I think not. Murdock offered some good suggestions that should be seriously considered.
 
Because the Democratic strongholds, taking advantage of such loopholes, refuse to audit their own electoral measures?
 
From what's gone on in my lifetime, I'd say that the answer to reforms is pretty simple:

We have to find a way to Democrat-proof our election process.
 
First of all, let's face it, the GOP does just as much election...engineering...as do we Democrats. This is an old, time-honored tradition that both parties are very, very good at. Does this mean it's a good thing? No. I find it frankly ironic that the GOP in Washington is doing the very thing the RNC bitched and moaned about Al Gore doing in Florida, they are trying to get the right number of votes for their candidate. As usual that involves cutting down the number of votes cast and the number voters eligible. The Washington governor's race is pretty much in the same place the Presidential election was in 2000, except that the GOP candidate isn't doing what Al Gore did...conceding the race for the good of the people after his legal avenues were exhausted.

acludem
 
acludem said:
First of all, let's face it, the GOP does just as much election...engineering...as do we Democrats. This is an old, time-honored tradition that both parties are very, very good at. Does this mean it's a good thing? No. I find it frankly ironic that the GOP in Washington is doing the very thing the RNC bitched and moaned about Al Gore doing in Florida, they are trying to get the right number of votes for their candidate. As usual that involves cutting down the number of votes cast and the number voters eligible. The Washington governor's race is pretty much in the same place the Presidential election was in 2000, except that the GOP candidate isn't doing what Al Gore did...conceding the race for the good of the people after his legal avenues were exhausted.

acludem

when acludem tries to say reps do it too, that means he's admitting the Dems have committed fraud. It is a standard 5 year old's tactic used to try and get out of a punishment for a foul they committed. "Everyone else does it. So..." The fact of the matter is in all the major cases of election fraud over the last 60 years of this country, a LARGE majority have involved Democrat canidates in democrat districts.

ACLUdem not tryin to defend this as legitimate is proof enough for me that there is fraud a foot and it needs to be corrected.
 
I said both parties, especially in local elections, have, how shall I say it, engineered election results. Republicans did it in Florida in 2000, and don't say they didn't because it's been proven eight ways to Sunday that they did. Democrats have done it, too. The race we are talking about here is almost literally a tie. The Democrat has been declared the winner by the Secretary of State and by the courts. It's time for the GOP to do what Al Gore did in Florida. Concede the race and move on.

acludem
 
acludem said:
I said both parties, especially in local elections, have, how shall I say it, engineered election results. Republicans did it in Florida in 2000, and don't say they didn't because it's been proven eight ways to Sunday that they did. Democrats have done it, too. The race we are talking about here is almost literally a tie. The Democrat has been declared the winner by the Secretary of State and by the courts. It's time for the GOP to do what Al Gore did in Florida. Concede the race and move on.

acludem

Actually, no court has declared Gregoire the winner. And it was only declared for Gregoire because the King County Elections Board committed acts which were at best incompetent, at worst fraudulent. That is what the GOP is attempting to do something about.
 
acludem said:
I said both parties, especially in local elections, have, how shall I say it, engineered election results. Republicans did it in Florida in 2000, and don't say they didn't because it's been proven eight ways to Sunday that they did.

acludem



Link?
 

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