More uncounted ballots found in Washington

[Beaverhausen]

Didn't see this posted yet. sorry if its a dupe.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=511&ncid=703&e=2&u=/ap/20041217/ap_on_el_gu/washington_governor

More Uncounted Ballots Found in Wash.

2 hours, 37 minutes ago

By REBECCA COOK, Associated Press Writer

SEATTLE - With Washington state in the middle of a recount of its amazingly close governor's race, election officials in Seattle's King County entered a warehouse Friday and found a plastic tray containing 150 misplaced ballots.

The discovery brings the number of belatedly discovered ballots to 723 in the heavily Democratic county — potentially enough to swing the election to Democrat Christine Gregoire.

Republican Dino Rossi won the Nov. 2 election over Gregoire by 261 votes in the first count and by just 42 after a machine recount of the 2.9 million ballots cast. On Thursday, with every county except King, Pierce and Spokane reporting, Rossi had pulled ahead by 74 votes.


The Republican Party went to court Friday to try to block, for the time being, the opening of those ballots. A judge set an afternoon hearing.

more at the link

[Jo March]

1. What? Republicans are going to court...to block votes?

What?? I can't believe they would do such a thing!

[goclark]

2. Wonder what led them to this Wherehouse ?

Sooo strnge.

I bet there are wherehouses and hiding places all over the USA.

What a shame.

[Carolab]

3. Count every REPUBLICAN vote

that's so patriotic and MORAL!

[SueZhope]

4. Yup this says it all....if they thought it would help them

they would SUE to count them

"King County election officials want to count the ballots, which they say are valid votes. Republicans want those ballots to stay rejected — or at the very least, they want King County to investigate further before adding them to the mix."

[JBear]

5. This sounds fishy to me too!

Now, here is a scenario - I do not have any information to say that this happened, but it is a possibility.

500+ ballots found in King County - provenence says they were legit absentee ballots that were rejected for signature.

It is widely believed that these ballots will go 55-60% for Gregoire and thus swing the election.

In comes another 100+ ballots of unknown provenence.

Repubs sue to suppress ALL these votes, but when they can not succeed we find that the original batch break dem and the new batch break repub....throwing the election right back where it was with no leg for people to talk about "extra fraudulent ballots"

genius!

[KaliTracy]

6. how in the hell does a "tray" of ballots get misplaced?

I'm so disgusted with this whole process....

[Igel]

7. There is a problem with this.

The rule going back nearly a decade is that the BOE's initial determination as to what's a valid vote isn't questioned during a recount. I don't think it's law, but a Sec. of State determination from the mid-90s.

If King county violates this rule, it means one (dem majority) county re-evaluated at least some of the invalid ballots, but the others didn't.

Elections should be squeaky clean.