Wash. Supreme Court Rejects Disqualified Ballots

[Viva_La_Revolution]

DAMNIT!!!!!

On my desktop alert:

10:30 AM PST

The Washington Supreme Court has rejected the petition from the Democratic Party to include previously disqualified ballots in the recount.


from KATU2 Portland, OR
sorry no link yet - will update when avail.

Link: http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=73422

snip>

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - The Washington Supreme Court has rejected the petition from the Democratic Party to include previously disqualified ballots in the recount.
Today's decision was unanimous by all eight justices who heard yesterday's arguments in Olympia.

The decision involves about three-thousand ballots that could have changed the race for governor.

Democrats said the ballots should not have been excluded because counties use different standards for disqualifying ballots.

Republicans said it would be wrong to change the rules at this point.

The recount will include only ballots originally counted.
end>

GAWD DAMNIT!!!!!

[merwin]

1. Here you go

http://www.kirotv.com/politics/3994460/detail.html

[Drifter]

2. Isn't this the reason you perform recounts ? ...

To do a better, more thorough job of ensuring that every vote counts ?

What the Christ !!!

Cheers
Drifter

[merwin]

3. In washington, the laws are incredibly vauge and stupid.

It says you only recount the votes that were counted the first time.

[merwin]

4. Those 561 King County absentees are still valid

This ruling does not include those ballots where they were discarded due to mis-match signature when there was actually no signature on file.

Those are going to be reviewed and recounted.

[Ediacara]

5. Ya, I was gonna say...

There are still 561 uncounted ballots...

[Viva_La_Revolution]

6. According to this....

NONE of those 3000 previously uncounted ballots will be counted. I take that to include the 581 not counted because the sig. were not matched. Hoping I am wrong.

[merwin]

11. The 561 is a different case

The elections committee has admitted their mistake and are going to correct that one.

It comes down to identifiable errors. This particular error is now known, and needs to be corrected. With the other 3000 or so ballots, they were disqualified for an unknown reason, and the court decision today said that they can't attempt to figure out if they're valid again.

The two sound similar, but are slighly different...

[MissB]

13. The 581 are not included in the Supreme Court ruling.

So they will still be counted.

[PatsFan2004]

27. However, WA state law RCW 29A.60.210 states that an

election board may recanvas the ballots to correct any errors prior to the date of certification of the results. Didn't certification occur on December 1, 2004?

[Ilsa]

23. Oh thank goodness for your post.

I was about to have a conniption fit over this and I don't even live in Washington.

[Megahurtz]

7. Maybe the judge was paid off

:mad:

[Brundle_Fly]

15. the pay off was getting the

posting in the first place.

[customerserviceguy]

18. Judge paid off??!!!

It was unanimous. You really can't suggest that all of them were paid off.

Really, when it comes down to it, you have to acknowledge that the problem with the WA gubernatorial election was the Democratic candidate. Christine Gregoire has statewide name familiarity, in a state that always leans heavily Democratic. Usually, in an important statewide race, that counts for about 53-55% of the vote, right there. She ran against a near-total unknown. I've lived in WA state for over 35 years, and I read the news a LOT, but never heard of Dino Rossi until he declared his candidacy for governor several months ago.

I was a vote counter for Grays Harbor County last Thursday. My table counted five precincts and Gregoire only won one of them. I saw a LOT of signs for Rossi everywhere I drove around here, but very, very few for Gregoire. She obviously didn't inspire a lot of people out in a fairly reliably Democratic county, even though she won our county by a couple of percentage points.

Somehow, enough people were upset with her to flip this from a sure-win Democratic victory to a cliffhanger, even though people were voting for an unknown quantity in Rossi. After this is over, Gregoire better do some soul-searching to figure out why it was even this close to begin with.

[Supersedeas]

8. the disenfranchised respectfully bow to their respective county officials

make them pay locally for their FREAKING incompetence.

[Norquist Nemesis]

9. Let me get this straight...

The SC is saying it's perfectly legal to disenfranchise voters from the get-go? Just a matter of making different rules for different people then deciding certain of those people wasted their time (oh and taxpayer money too) but that's okay?

How far we've come. *sigh*

[fob]

10. If they were rejected doesn't that mean they were "counted" as

zero? Or more appropriately "no votes". Thus they WERE "counted" the first time, just not tallied.

It seems like these "justices" just said that I can VOTE, but if it's not counted, it doesn't count? That means all one has to do is turn the tallying machine off when your choice is in the lead! Uh, let's see bush* has 2 votes, Kerry has 1, turn it off we're done here!

/madness

[merwin]

12. They don't count if they were deemed invalid, not if they weren't tallied

[fob]

20. I'm not trying to be dense but your quadruple negative has me

confused.

[merwin]

21. I'm a very negative person :)

If the ballots were absentee and deemed invalid, they are counted as never having been cast. If you turn off a machine counting valid votes, those votes would still have to be counted.

[fob]

22. OK

But if you turn off a machine counting valid votes, doesn't this judgement say that all other votes (that should have gone through the machine) are invalid BECAUSE they weren't counted?

I mean what's the difference between the person that casts their ballot and has someone ELSE declare it invalid and the person that casts their ballot and has someone ELSE just NOT count it? Why does the protection of your vote hinge on it's ability to get by arbitrary checkpoints and somehow make it to the COUNTED pile to afford it the right to be re-counted?


I hold out that once you cast it, EVERY effort must be given to EVERY ballot to be accepted AND counted. ALL ballots should get the same treatment (or at least the similar process if they are of differing types) and determination of valid/invalid should only come at the END of EVERY attempt to count said ballot.

Right?

[merwin]

26. That is true, but

again, the laws in Washington seem designed to prevent any worthwhile recount by stating that you only count what was counted the first time, to make sure the machines are working. It doesn't include any provisions for verifying ballots that were thrown out.

[rabid_nerd]

28. This is the most asinine standard I've ever heard n/t

The absentees were deemed invalid due to signatures. They weren't "not counted" because of signatures by a person looking at them any more or any less then the 3,000-odd ballots were "deemed invalid" because of a computer looking at them.

This is double talk, plain and simple.

You can't logically support the 500-odd and not the 3000-odd.

[MGKrebs]

19. Dems need to look at a challenge to the law.

That law may violate the Voting Rights act or HAVA.

[TahitiNut]

14. They should take it to the USSC ...

... and we can watch while the USSC completely reverses the "uniform standard" principle they relied upon when 'deciding' Bush v. Gore.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[grasswire]

17. move on?

I smell something.

[MisterCompletly]

24. Dumb question time

If these ballots were disqualified at the time of the election what has changed since then to suddenly make them valid? It sounds like a different fight for a different time rather than during a recount.

Sure it would be great if the rules could be changed but I'm guessing it would take a court battle that will never complete in time.

[Rainscents]

25. ROSSI...

I truly believe, lot of people voted for Rossi... had nothing to do with NOT liking Gregoire, I believe, lot of people were tired of Gov. LOCK and voters were sending message to Democrat! I voted for Gregoire as I am a die hard democrat!