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Democrat Takes 10-Vote Lead in WA Governor Race 139

Posted by pudge from the not-done-yet dept.
Two major developments in the apparently neverending Washington state governor's race happened on Wednesday. As the second recount wound down, with 38 of 39 counties reporting -- all but the heavily Democratic-leaning King County -- Republican Dino Rossi extended his lead from 42 votes to 49. Then, the state Supreme Court ruled that its December 14 decision which disallowed including new ballots in the hand recount did not preclude county canvassing boards from including new ballots, which paves the way for 735 previously rejected ballots in King County to be processed. Then, King County announced that its hand recount (not including the 735) swung toward Democrat Christine Gregoire by 59 votes, giving her a 10-vote lead statewide (1,373,051 to 1,373,041). More court challenges are likely to follow.
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Democrat Takes 10-Vote Lead in WA Governor Race More

Democrat Takes 10-Vote Lead in WA Governor Race

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  • Who's crying now? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @07:15PM (#11163913) Homepage
    Before this latest gain for the Dems, the Republicans where telling the Dems to quit crying and just give in, that resorting to the courts was proff they where all cry babies. I wonder if their tune will change now.
    • The problem I have with this whole thing is that the election is in the noise. There is no real way of telling who won.

      If you take a noisy source, and sample it a bunch of times, you will get a different answer each time.

      It seems that the loser in an election in the noise will win. Hold the "ace" in the rear until the process of recounts win, then play the ace, and voila, you winl

  • See, you're not the only one that can screw up an election! And I'm not just talking about Ohio, either. Nossir, we'll be in the record books for good. Or until the next guys come along.



    Man, I really hope we have a governor soon.

    • See, you're not the only one that can screw up an election! And I'm not just talking about Ohio, either. Nossir, we'll be in the record books for good. Or until the next guys come along.

      This is what happens when you mix up Microsoft software with anything important. Mod me troll if you want, but it doesn't make it any less true. Microsoft Windows (especially CE!!) is not intended for anything mission critical, such as medical equipment, etc., and shouldn't be used at all in something as critical as an el

    • See, you're not the only one that can screw up an election! And I'm not just talking about Ohio, either. Nossir, we'll be in the record books for good. Or until the next guys come along.

      I wasn't really under the impression that there were any significant voting irregularites (~700 ballots out of several million don't count as significant, especially as I have heard of no allegations of selective bias), even though 13% of voters (extrapolated from 2000 Census via Wikipedia) used e-voting systems.

      Not real

  • Here's a dumb question - why not a runoff? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mbourgon ( 186257 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @07:23PM (#11163977) Homepage
    What's the big problem?
    • Rejecting a legally held election is necessarily a big problem. You're invalidating the stated will of the people. Plus, it would cost many millions of dollars.
      • Rejecting?

        In Louisiana, we state that if no candidate receieves a majority, it goes to runoff between the top two (or something like that; I'm not voting age yet). We tend to have a runoff every year for some important race or another.

        A runoff is a recognition that these two candidates were preferred by the people, and it's a request to see which of these two would most approve of.
        • Rejecting?

          In Louisiana, we state that if no candidate receieves a majority, it goes to runoff between the top two (or something like that

          Yes, that is what LA law says. But WA law does not say that, to arbitrarily have a runoff just because it is close would be a rejection of the election, yes.

          If you're talking about changing the law for next time, that's a different thing.
    • Changing the rules in the middle of the game?

      Not necessarily worse than manufacturing votes...

    • You're right, that is a dumb question. Elections are governed by laws, and I very much doubt that the laws of Washington state allow anyone there to simply declare, "Fuck this mess, we're having a run-off." There are rules in place that dictate what happens in a case like this. What what get to find out now is how good those rules are, and whether they need fixing before the next election. What we DON'T get to do is just make up new rules as we go along. (Unless, of course, we're the Supreme Court in 2000.
    • A former secretary of state (republican) suggested the same thing and was pretty well laughed at, which is unfortunate. Most likely this will end up in the legislature, which by an obscure section of our state constitution can decide in cases like this. Then the issue becomes when the Leg will decide because until the end of this session it's Republican controlled, afterward it belongs to the Democrats. Oh, the lawsuits will fly.
    • it costs time and money... The two most precious things in America... ;)

      Not seriously, If I was living there, I would take this occassion to make sure there was legislation forcing a recount AND a Re-vote if the difference was less then 0.1% (or a 3 sigma limit or whatever)

  • An important thing to realize... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pacifix ( 465793 ) <zorp AT zorpy DOT com> on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @07:27PM (#11164012)
    ... about WA state is its geography. King County is very big population wise and very Democratic. The counties to the west of the Cascades (which divide the state N-S about 1/4 of the way E from the ocean), are all blue to purple and then all of the counties to the east of the Cascades are blood red republican. Rossi won most of the counties in the state, but King County's population (along with neighboring Snohomish County) almost has the power to make all of those moot. It's like Texas, California and New York all rolled into one. So when Gregoire does win - which I hope she does - it'll really set the stage for a Seattle vs rest-of-the-state animosity that will take years to resolve.
    • I should add that the same Dem-Rep breakdown will occur if Rossi wins, and it might be even more acid given the drubbing we Dems have taken over the past five years. I think Wa and Fl are in some type of quantum entanglement...
    • Uh, Rossi won Snohomish.
      • My comment went back and forth between this election and WA elections in general, which was my mistake. It was strange for a Republican to take Snohomish (particularly in the last 20 years or so), and so normally Snoho helps re-enforce King's population superiority. I didn't state this clearly. Sorry.
        • It's no more strange for Rossi to win Snohomish (where I live) than it is for Rossi to be where he is statewide (considering Kerry won the state by about 7 percentage points, and he won Snohomish county by a greater margin than Rossi did).

          It's actually what I expected and predicted more than half a year before the election, when I said on /. that Rossi would win the state and this county. It's not strange because farmers and small business owners and people who pay a lot in taxes -- which is increasingly
          • I see your point and it's a good one, but I'm not sure I necessarily agree with. Snohomish Co. has a pretty large urban/middle class popultion - not as much as King, but more so than Kitsap. The city of Snohomish and its socially conservative/economically conservative voters can't match the numbers of the socially moderate-liberal/economically moderate voters of Edmonds and Lynnwood. Rossi won Snoho and did as well as he did around the state not because of his tax policies, which really aren't that radic
    • King County is not very democrat. It's split. Seattle is 60-40 democrat, but the rest of the county is most definitely republican. You'll note that there is a 7-6 split D-R on the council.

      Break off Seattle from the county, and it will be bright red, like the rest of the state.

      As for the animosity, yes, that has been happening for the past 20 years of democrat rule, thank you very much. We've been holding torches and pitchforks for ages, but you have your head so far up your *** that you haven't noticed. I
    • Another important thing to realize is that it doesn't really matter who "wins" what county. There is no winning a county, at least the way we do it here in washington. It is a general election, and every vote counts (supposedly) toward the grand total of Candidate A vs Candidate B. Thats why we care about the ridiculosity of a 3 million vote race being decided by less than a thousand votes instead of the utter destruction of Gregoire's hopes after losing all but one county in the state. People like to t

  • Problem with the democratic process (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skware ( 78429 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @07:29PM (#11164024) Homepage
    It seems that if there is such a close race that there is only 10 votes in it, then it's not really democracy that's deciding the winner of this. Instead it comes down to combinations of random events. How many car accidents statewide were there on the day of the ballot... How many people couldn't get to the polling booths due to bad health etc. Why not just flip a coin to decide who gets in, it would probably have just as much meaning.

    • Random events aren't nearly as big a threat as things that have non-random [mac.com] effects.

      In everything from the allocation of resources to polling places to the determination of the order of candidates, non-random, systematic "errors" can be surprisingly powerful in a democracy such as ours.

      --MarkusQ

    • It seems that if there is such a close race that there is only 10 votes in it, then it's not really democracy that's deciding the winner of this. Instead it comes down to combinations of random events.

      Yes.

      But before you get too upset about it, remember that Democracy here has basically stated that it "doesn't care" which one wins.

      Thus, the real issue here is getting a happy loser [jerf.org] more than obtaining a winner; practically speaking they both won or lost equally and "fair" or "meaning" really isn't on the
    • I think we are going to see a lot more close races. It seems to me that the marketing people are dialing in on the ability to predict what the people will vote for. If one candidate has a position that is gaining him/her votes, then the other candidate will co-opt that position. Given that politics is mostly marketing these days, I see the market naturally converging to a 50-50 split.

      • If one candidate has a position that is gaining him/her votes, then the other candidate will co-opt that position. Given that politics is mostly marketing these days, I see the market naturally converging to a 50-50 split.

        This all assumes that both candidates will have equally good marketing people running their campaign. This is unlikely to be the case. Probably one of them will happen to end up with a more skilled staff, either by luck or because they spend more money or whatever.

    • Why not just flip a coin to decide who gets in, it would probably have just as much meaning.

      Most states specify a method to resolve contests where the count results in a tie, and in some cases, it really is decided by a coin flip! (example [cnn.com])

  • Pudge, we need more information (Score:5, Informative)

    by jamie ( 78724 ) <jamie@slashdot.org> on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @07:36PM (#11164085) Journal
    Pudge, you write:

    "the state Supreme Court ruled that its December 14 decision which disallowed including new ballots in the hand recount did not preclude county canvassing boards from including new ballots"

    This seems to imply with a note of sarcasm that the state Supreme Court is ruling against itself. I haven't been following your state's results as closely as you have, but this does not seem true to me. From my skimming of the link you gave to the Dec. 14 decision, I see that decision was regarding whether the Supreme Court could order the Secretary of State to order counties to re-check previously rejected ballots. That the Supreme Court refused to order this to be done does not in any way mean it, as you write, "disallowed" it from being done. This seems to me a fairly trivial point.

    From the decision you linked to:

    ...various electors and the Washington State Democratic Central Committee seek an order directing Secretary of State Sam Reed to promulgate "uniform standards" ... that ensure that all ballots rejected in previous counts are fully canvassed so that the hand recount produces as complete and accurate a tabulation as possible...

    ...we must reject petitioners' arguments.

    ...this court cannot order the Secretary to establish standards for the recanvassing of ballots previously rejected in this election. And petitioners' call for uniform signature-checking standards (seemingly beyond the statutory requirement that the signature on an absentee ballot be the same as the signature in voter registration files) is beyond the relief that can be afforded in this action.

    And the Supreme Court goes on to address precisely the contradiction I think you're raising, in its second decision, making itself quite clear:

    In our decision in that case, issued December 14, 2004, we held that under Washington's recount statute, "ballots are to be `retabulated' only if they have been previously counted or tallied, subject to the provisions of RCW 29A.60.210." (Emphasis added.) The quoted language, referencing the "recanvassing" statute, RCW 29A.60.210, acknowledges that under proper circumstances a canvassing board may decide that ballots should be recanvassed before certification of a recount. Indeed, the Secretary of State's Director of Elections, Nick Handy, has provided this court with a detailed declaration explaining how other counties have already employed RCW 29A.60.210 to count votes from ballots not counted in the original returns for this election. Our prior opinion did not hold that the recanvassing statute may not be employed by canvassing boards during a recount.

    (My emphasis.)

    The first decision seems quite clearly limited in its scope, in such a way that there is no contradiction in the second. The Seattle Times story you link to agrees with me on this. If you disagree, you owe it to our readers either to disclose that your disagreement is your opinion, or to explain clearly and factually what parts of the two decisions contradict each other. As I say, you've been studying this a lot longer and more carefully than I have, so maybe I'm all wrong on this. I'd like to see what you have to say about it -- in detail, not just implied in part of one sentence.

    My suspicion is that "the Washington Supreme Court contradicted itself, so Gregoire's election is illegitimate" may shortly become part of the GOP's talking points, so this is no small matter.

    • You apparently posted without reading either of the court rulings.

      The December 14th decision states:

      http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/?fa=opinions.opi ndisp&docid=763216MAJ [wa.gov]

      It follows that this court cannot order the Secretary to establish standards for the recanvassing of ballots previously rejected in this election, although this ruling shall disallow the canvassing boards addition of new votes to the current vote totals. And petitioners' call for uniform signature-checking standards (seemingly

      • You're trolling, right? The first decision, which you linked to, actually reads:

        It follows that this court cannot order the Secretary to establish standards for the recanvassing of ballots previously rejected in this election. And petitioners' call for uniform signature-checking standards (seemingly beyond the statutory requirement that the signature on an absentee ballot be the same as the signature in voter registration files) is beyond the relief that can be afforded in this action.

        So the part you p

  • This blog has some startling facts that you should familiarize yourself with.

    * Statistically speaking, Rossi is still considered the winner unless Gregoire pulls out with a 300 vote lead. This is pure math, folks, nothing more, nothing less.

    * A survey of the voters in Washington showed that if Rossi wins, he should be declared the winner. However. the majority feel that if Gregoire wins, we should have a runoff election.

    * Interesting notes as one of the bloggers investigates the voting rolls. Fraud, anyo

    • Re:Check out Sound Politics (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pudge ( 3605 ) * <slashdot@pudge. n e t> on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @07:55PM (#11164216) Homepage Journal
      * Statistically speaking, Rossi is still considered the winner unless Gregoire pulls out with a 300 vote lead. This is pure math, folks, nothing more, nothing less.

      No. She is the winner if she has a 1-vote lead. You don't average out the previous counts. The result of the current recount is the result, period. It's simple law, folks.

      * A survey of the voters in Washington showed that if Rossi wins, he should be declared the winner. However. the majority feel that if Gregoire wins, we should have a runoff election.

      What the majority feel is irrelevant. What the law says is what matters.

      * Everyone in Washington State now admits that King County has not been following state law in the elections process.

      In some respects, perhaps, but the question is whether they are following the law properly *now,* and the Supreme Court just ruled in its favor, and the Republican Secretary of State is on the county's side in this matter.
      • * Statistically speaking, Rossi is still considered the winner unless Gregoire pulls out with a 300 vote lead. This is pure math, folks, nothing more, nothing less.

        No. She is the winner if she has a 1-vote lead. You don't average out the previous counts. The result of the current recount is the result, period. It's simple law, folks.

        Uhhh... statistically speaking. I thought republicans were supposed to be the dumb ones, too.

        What the majority feel is irrelevant. What the law says is what matters.

        Int

        • Re:Check out Sound Politics (Score:4, Interesting)

          by pudge ( 3605 ) * <slashdot@pudge. n e t> on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @08:07PM (#11164339) Homepage Journal
          Uhhh... statistically speaking.

          Statistics apply when you are *sampling.* We are not sampling, we are counting.

          I thought republicans were supposed to be the dumb ones, too.

          Are you implying I am not a Republican?

          Does the majority have a right to change the law to reflect their desires or not?

          Of course. But not in the middle of the process. Change it for next time, if you like.

          You mean the part where they don't even verify signatures on the absentee ballots? Or the part where they allow people to list office buildings as their primary residence? Or the part where they allow people to register and vote multiple times under the same name at the same address? I didn't know the Supreme Court ruled on those matters.

          All counties have similar issues. Obviously, the Republican Party didn't think there was a significant enough legal case to bring about any challenges to these relatively minor problems.
          • "relatively minor"?

            Gregoire herself publicly stated in the past that these ballots are inadmissible. and now she demands they be counted as well?

          • Uhhh... statistically speaking.
            Statistics apply when you are *sampling.* We are not sampling, we are counting.

            Ah..a familiar discussion, no? Anyway, statistics applies to other arenas than sampling.

            However, you are correct to find fault with jgardn's logic: he isn't applying statistics at ALL: just enough algebra to compute a mean. And he is doing a poor job of this too. This algebra doesn't hold because each subsequent recount is considered more significant and less error prone than any previous cou

    • It's not Democrats vs. Republicans (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @08:20PM (#11164431) Journal

      The problem isn't Democrats vs. Republicans, it's honest people of both parties vs. corrupt people of either party.

      I happen to be a Republican, but I'm quite willing to accept Democratic politicians when they win honestly. When they win by cheating, I want to see them (and/or whoever cheated on their behalf) behind bars. Likewise, when someone "of my party" cheats to win, I want them nailed.

      The problem is, it's very hard to get the leaders of either party to take a stand on this issue because they know (as many of us are begining to realize) just how often there is cheating by both parties. Instead, they try to get is tangled up with us vs. them debates as if one side was pure as the driven snow and the other was corrupt to the core. That's not the way it is.

      There are a lot of honest people in both parties. They are being run into the ground by the cheats, and "we the people" need to put a stop to it.

      --MarkusQ

    • Re:Check out Sound Politics (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jeif1k ( 809151 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @09:56PM (#11165038)
      * Statistically speaking, Rossi is still considered the winner unless Gregoire pulls out with a 300 vote lead. This is pure math, folks, nothing more, nothing less.

      Statistically, mathematically, and legally, the winner is the person who has the most votes after the recount. Period.

      As for me, it's obvious. The democrats have successfully stolen the election, and I have proof.

      Winning on recount isn't "stealing the election". The real question we should ask is why Republican leads seem to fall apart so frequently when one actually checks the ballots. Think about that for a moment.

  • Why.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @07:56PM (#11164222)
    ...is a recount considered more accurate than the original count? If a recount doesn't agree with the figures from a prevoius counting, shouldn't they count it again until they get two countings that match? That way there couldn't be any dispute. Why is a "margin of error" tolerated, especially when the difference in votes is so close? The numbers should be *exact*.

    • Re:Why.... (Score:3, Informative)

      by pudge ( 3605 ) *
      Why is a recount considered more accurate than the original count?

      Because the law says so. There are good reasons why that is the case, but the bottom line is all that matters: follow the law.

      If a recount doesn't agree with the figures from a prevoius counting, shouldn't they count it again until they get two countings that match?

      Only if the law says so. It does not. Following the law is all that matters.
      • No offense, but, No Shit.(TM)

        Obviously I was asking why the rules are the way they are, not why we're obeying the rules.

        • Re:Why.... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by pudge ( 3605 ) * <slashdot@pudge. n e t> on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @08:29PM (#11164504) Homepage Journal
          That is not obvious at all. Most other people in this and previous discussions on the matter who have argued along similar lines have asked why we don't do X *now*, regardless of the law.

          Anyway, the recount is considered more accurate because *most* of the difference in a recount is the inclusion of ballots that were not properly counted the first time around. Note that very few counties subtracted votes [wa.gov] in the hand recount. It's not merely a matter of making sure you got the count right, it's a matter of correcting mistakes made the first (or second) time around.

          I don't necessarily agree with that, but that's the general idea.
    • Why is a "margin of error" tolerated, especially when the difference in votes is so close?

      Because bad ballots come out, even when the voter did everything right. There is a margin of error in any voting system just because of this. This is one of the reasons why anyone with a bit of statistics and science background will tell you that Florida in 2000 was a tie, moronic laws notwithstanding.

      • Because bad ballots come out, even when the voter did everything right.

        Clearly the number of bad ballots shouldn't change between countings.... Unless somebody is doing something unsavory.... Right?

        • Re:Why.... (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jlanthripp ( 244362 )
          Unless somebody is doing something unsavory.... Right?
          Or unless a person counting votes forgot to carry the 2...or simply miscounted. Ever count a few thousand pieces of paper?
          • Which brings me back to the original question... What makes one recount more accurate than the previous one?

            • Re:Why.... (Score:2, Interesting)

              by jlanthripp ( 244362 )
              Absolutely nothing, though I'd argue that the first recount would probably be more accurate than the original count for the simple reason that the people doing the counting are likely to be a little more careful at that point. Anything after that and you run a higher risk of people getting tired and bored and just going through the motions on autopilot, IMHO.
    • According to the law, yes it is considered more accurate than the machine count.

      Is it really? Probably not.

      But that doesn't mean that a recount system couldn't be put in place that actually does increase the accuracy of an election. Here is a laundry list of what you need to have an increasing accuracy recount system instead of this craziness we have today.

      1: Durable Ballots - You need to use ballots that will be resistant to damage which would make the ballot unreadible or even change the vote cast. Thi
    • A margin of error is tolerated because of the costs that would be necessary to produce a system without one.

      Pudge: be really careful saying things like 'its more accurate because the law says so.' The law was written as such for a number of reasons, all of which point to the recounts being more accurate as the result of a process of reasoning, not merely by governmental fiat.

      Why are the recounts more accurate?

      The machine recount is not more accurate in terms of the actually physical process of counting
    • A marine of error is tolerated because each time you recount, you are going to get a different number. If the two are basically tied, each time you will get a different winner. This is what is happening in Washington. No one will ever be satisfied because we simply lack of ability to count as accuratly as we need to in order to come up with the same winner each time.

      No matter how careful or supervised the recount is, it will ALWAYS result in different numbers. When the race is as close as this one is,
  • is not to find out who really won, it's to recount until you win (both sides).

  • Confused... (Score:3, Funny)

    by godglike ( 643670 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @09:51PM (#11165009)
    Ye Gods America, who is running your elections? The lawyers or the TV networks?
    • Mod parent up.

      Only a blind partisan could be happy with such a victory.
    • As an American I must say that I think it's a mixture of both lawyers and the media. Since I believe every American is either a lawyer or a member of the media, this represents us all better than you could imagine.

      -> Fritz
  • Call me a proud Washington voter.

    Plus, I volunteered to get out the vote, so I may be responsible for more votes than my own.

    If there's one lesson to take from these last two elections, it's that voting matters.
  • It's a problem when some votes are double counted in the machine count, or not counted at all due to mechanical error.

    It's a problem when voters who followed the rules when voting, don't have their vote counted due to officials messing up.

    It's a problem when both sides can't agree to simply have every vote count.

    Personally, I'd prefer Gregoire to win over Rossi. But still, no matter the results, I'd rather have a run-off when the election is this close.

  • and the nationals? (Score:3)

    by orn ( 34773 ) on Thursday December 23, 2004 @06:55AM (#11166881)
    what I want to know is why isn't this same thing happening with the national elections? Sure, the first recount was tripped automatically because of a close election, but all the shenigans that follow are a result of people thinking there's something wrong with the system.

    Is there _anyone_ that doesn't think something is wrong with our national system?

    Blech.
    • I'm going to have to ask for clarification on your statement, because our "national system" is pretty much controlled on a state-by-state basis, even for the Presidential election. The only truly federally-controlled part of the election is the tabulation of electoral votes and the declaration of the winner based on those votes, and I don't think anybody has said that any shenanigans have ruined that part of the process, regardless of what people think of the electoral college itself.

  • florida 2000 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 ) <aaaaa&SPAM,yahoo,com> on Friday December 24, 2004 @03:02PM (#11177920) Journal
    this is how florida 2000 would have played out had the court not stepped in. Now, the question remains, what is to stop the republicans from recounting till they win? which recount is the final one? especially with a 10 vote margin.
    • As far as I'm concerned, if the Democrats did this sort of thing, the Republicans should be able to do it too.

      After all, it was fair for Democrats to do, why shouldn't it be fair for Republicans too?
  • Rossi and Gregoire are both rather weak, divisive candidates. The problem is the first-past-the-post system tends to produce such candidates. Alternative voting systems like approval voting [wikipedia.org] or Condorcet Voting [wikipedia.org] would get around much of this problem

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