Former Secretary of State pushes for new vote -WA State

[Rose Siding]

Former Secretary of State Ralph Munro, a key supporter of Republican Dino Rossi during the contentious recounts in Washington's race for governor, says it may be time to toss out all of the votes and do the election over.
Munro, who oversaw the state's elections system for 20 years before retiring in 2000, said a new vote is probably the only way to restore voter confidence and get a clear winner.

His comments came as the state Republican Party prepared to file a lawsuit against King County seeking to stop the county's recount, and votes reported from Snohomish County further tightened the race between Rossi and Democrat Christine Gregoire.

"This thing could just degenerate and spiral downward," Munro said yesterday. "Whoever eventually becomes governor is going to have a very hard time governing, and we're going to go through four years of flopping around."

He suggested allowing new voter registrations for a few weeks, then holding a new election in February.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002122517_recount17m.html

[ogradda]

1. can we do that?

i didn't even know we could do that.

[kurtyboy]

5. No, Washington State law does not allow for this

The law is very clear--after the requested recount is done, the election is final. We will have a legal governor, legally elected, with a legal duty to act as the state's Chief Executive.

The GOP just doesn't want to admit that when every vote gets counted, they lose. They'd rather stick to a partial count of the votes--so long as it is favorable to them.

Their flip-flops are striking, but the press says nothing. "Gregoire wants the courts to steel the election instead of the people." Yesterday the GOP went to court to block King County from counting legally cast votes. "The rule of law is all that matters. (Unless we lose, then we need a special run-off never before used in this state, and mentioned nowhere in it's statues.)"

[LiberalFighter]

7. Even if a revote could be done...

It wouldn't be right to have have others vote that didn't vote the first time.

Or those that voted and died since the election not being able to vote.

[burythehatchet]

2. I have an even better idea Ralphie

let's "do-over" the entire nation.

[Rose Siding]

3. The dem reaction is puzzling

snip>
Democrats scoffed at the proposal, saying Republicans were raising it only because Rossi's whisker-thin lead appears in jeopardy.
............

Pretty tough talk when she hasn't even pulled ahead yet. I'd prefer if dems were consistently in favor of "voter confidence"

[Mike Niendorff]

4. Just finish counting the votes. Simple, really.

What it comes down to, from what I'm seeing, is that because the ballots in question in King County are absentee ballots, they can be clearly linked to individual voters. This, in turn, puts a specific voter's face on each ballot they're trying to wrongfully disqualify, which means they've got a PR nightmare on their hands if they try to install Rossi into office by keeping legit votes out of the count. So, either they accept the actual results of the count, or they try to find a way around it. Looks like they're laying the groundwork for the latter approach.


MDN

[sally343434]

6. A re-vote would help Rossi

A re-vote would be of enormous benefit to Rossi. He, through his surrogates Vance and the local right-wing hate radio network, have been mercilessly trashing democrats and Gregoire. So essentially we've had weeks of unanswered Rossi "attack ads."

As usual, we have Munro spouting this nonsense:

> "This thing could just degenerate and spiral downward," Munro
> said yesterday. "Whoever eventually becomes governor is going to
> have a very hard time governing...

It's only because of the typical thuggish behavior by Rossi and the rest of the republican cabal that is has "degenerated downward."

[montanacowboy]

8. Not too sure about that ----

there were 500+ write in votes for Ron Sims...do you think these idiots would reconsider their vote in another time around?

And how the hell does Munro keep getting elected - turn this A hole out to pasture