Washington and the Concept of "Re-voting"
Sound Politics is doing great work laying out the endgame in the election for Washington governor. Here is what we know:
1. Republican Dino Rossi won on election day when the ballots were first tabulated.
2. Republican Dino Rossi won in the machine recount.
3. Republican Dino Rossi was winning in the manual recount prior to the ballots for King County being reported (thus assuring that the Democratic Party-controlled King County would know precisely how many votes they needed to get Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire over the top).
4. King County delivered, giving Gregoire the "victory" in the manual recount.
5. It has now been revealed that 1800 or so more "votes" were counted in King County than they had voters signing in on election day.
6. It has now been revealed that King County incorrectly fed 300+ provisional ballots into their voting machines without checking them for whether the votes were legitimate (i.e., the voters were properly registered, etc.).
7. It has now been revealed that King County had at least a handful of dead people voting.
Many in Washington are thus (obviously) calling for a re-vote. I understand the position, and the sentiment animating it... this was a stolen election. But the concept of a re-vote is a bad one, and I don't think in general we want to set a precedent for re-voting whenever an election is close. Government isn't a children's game; governors (and Presidents) actually have real responsibilities that won't wait while we have endless "do-overs." In Washington state it might not be so terrible; in Washington, D.C. it would be dangerous.
The correct answer is for a court of law, presumably the Washington Supreme Court, but perhaps even the United States Supreme Court, to decide whether the manual recount process in Washington and the mounting evidence that King County's tally was fraudulent so "shocks the conscience" as to make the manual recount a denial of equal protection and due process. If it was, then the answer is to simply say that the machine recount was the only non-fraudulent (I'm not saying "accurate") count that we can use, so Rossi is the winner.
1. Republican Dino Rossi won on election day when the ballots were first tabulated.
2. Republican Dino Rossi won in the machine recount.
3. Republican Dino Rossi was winning in the manual recount prior to the ballots for King County being reported (thus assuring that the Democratic Party-controlled King County would know precisely how many votes they needed to get Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire over the top).
4. King County delivered, giving Gregoire the "victory" in the manual recount.
5. It has now been revealed that 1800 or so more "votes" were counted in King County than they had voters signing in on election day.
6. It has now been revealed that King County incorrectly fed 300+ provisional ballots into their voting machines without checking them for whether the votes were legitimate (i.e., the voters were properly registered, etc.).
7. It has now been revealed that King County had at least a handful of dead people voting.
Many in Washington are thus (obviously) calling for a re-vote. I understand the position, and the sentiment animating it... this was a stolen election. But the concept of a re-vote is a bad one, and I don't think in general we want to set a precedent for re-voting whenever an election is close. Government isn't a children's game; governors (and Presidents) actually have real responsibilities that won't wait while we have endless "do-overs." In Washington state it might not be so terrible; in Washington, D.C. it would be dangerous.
The correct answer is for a court of law, presumably the Washington Supreme Court, but perhaps even the United States Supreme Court, to decide whether the manual recount process in Washington and the mounting evidence that King County's tally was fraudulent so "shocks the conscience" as to make the manual recount a denial of equal protection and due process. If it was, then the answer is to simply say that the machine recount was the only non-fraudulent (I'm not saying "accurate") count that we can use, so Rossi is the winner.
posted by PDB at 8:47 AM
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