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Advertisement JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL Don't Count Rossi Out A stolen election in Washington state? Monday, January 10, 2005 12:01 am EST The new media--talk radio, bloggers and independent watchdog groups--have followed up their success in exposing Dan Rather's use of phony memos b y showcasing another scandal: Washington state's bizarre race for govern or, which features a vote count so close and compromised it allows Flori da to retire the crown for electoral incompetence. If Democrat Christine Gregoire, who leads by 129 votes and is scheduled to take the office We dnesday, eventually has to face a new election, it will have been in lar ge part because of the new media's ability to give the story altitude be fore it reached the courts. When the idea of a revote was first broached three weeks ago by a moderat e Republican former secretary of state, Ms Gregoire's reaction was swif t: "Absolutely ludicrous." With Republican candidate Dino Rossi filing a formal court challenge last Friday alleging a massive breakdown in the vote count, she may still think the idea of a court-ordered revote is la ughable, but her legal team is taking it seriously. "There's not even a 50-50 chance a court would rule with Republicans to set aside the electi on," says Jenny Durkan, a Gregoire confidant who is representing state D emocrats. The feeling that a revote is possible is buoyed by polls showing the publ ic still thinks Mr Rossi, who won the first two vote counts before fall ing behind in the third, actually won. His legal team has also compiled a strong body of evidence showing irregularities, certainly one far more detailed than that which North Carolina officials used last week to ord er a statewide March revote of the race for agriculture commissioner aft er a computer ate 4,438 ballots in a GOP-leaning county. Without those v otes, the GOP candidate was leading by 2,287 votes out of 35 million ca st. In Washington state, the errors by election officials have been compared to the antics of Inspector Clouseau, only clumsier. At least 1,200 more votes were counted in Seattle's King County than the number of individua l voters who can be accounted for. Other counties saw similar, albeit sm aller, excess vote totals. More than 300 military personnel who were sen t their absentee ballots too late to return them have signed affidavits saying they intended to vote for Mr Rossi. Some 1 out of 20 ballots in King County that officials felt were marked unclearly were "enhanced" wi th Wite-Out or pens so that some had their original markings obliterated . Most disturbing is the revelation last week by King County officials that at least 348 unverified provisional ballots were fed directly into vote -counting machines. Unfortunately, that's part of t he process in King County," elections superintendent Bill Huennekens tol d the Seattle Times. "It's a very human process, and in some cases that did happen." King County elections director Dean Logan, Mr Huennekens' boss, also con cedes the discrepancy between the number of ballots cast and the list of people who are recorded as voting. Even though the gap is 1,200 votes, he says, "that does not clearly indicate that the election would have tu rned out differently." Are voters supposed to trust an election merely b ecause it can't "clearly" be shown to be hopelessly tainted? Mr Logan i s certainly singing a different tune now than he was on Nov. It's all too convenient, if not now fashionable, to stoop to this level when there is a close race." Slade Gorton, a Republican former state attorney general and US senator who is advising Mr Rossi, says a court should order a revote rather th an declare valid one of the two earlier vote counts that Mr Rossi won. "No one can govern effectively under the cloud this race has created," M r Gorton says. He notes that state law doesn't require any showing of f raud to contest an election. "That is irrelevant to whether the election should be done over," he says. "The law is quite clear in giving a cour t the right to void any election where the number of illegal or mistaken votes exceeds the margin of victory, and it has done so in the past." Mr Gorton notes that Sam Reed, the Republican secretary of state who cer tified Ms Gregoire's victory, issued a report in 2003 noting that King County's sloppy election procedures could lead to just this sort of elec tion meltdown. "The county is not consistent in their ballot enhancement procedures," Mr Reed's report concluded. "Ballot enhancement, while do ne in full view of political observers, did not use the procedures outli ned in the Washington Administrative Code. Inconsistencies in how this p rocedure is handled significantly increase the possibility of a successf ul election contest."
com, a blog run by computer consult ant Stefan Sharkansky. A former liberal who worked for Michael Dukakis i n 1988, Mr Sharkansky calls himself a "9/11 conservative mugged by real ity." He uses his knowledge of statistics and probability to illustrate how unlikely some of the reported vote count changes are. He also uncove red the fact that in Precinct 1823 in downtown Seattle, 527, or 70%, of the 763 registered voters used 500 Fourth Avenue--the King County admini stration building--as their residential address. A full 61% of the preci nct's voters only registered in the last year, and nearly all of them "l ive" at 500 Fourth Avenue. By contrast, only 13% of all of King County v oters registered in 2004. Not all of the voters at the county building are homeless or hard to find . A noted local judge and her husband have been registered at the county building for years. When I called her to ask why, she became flustered and said it was because of security concerns, specifically because "the Mexican mafia are out to get me." When I pointed out that her home addre ss and phone number were easily found on the Internet and in property re cords, she ended the conversation by refusing to answer a question about whether she had improperly voted for state legislative candidates who w ould represent the county building but not her residence. Even liberal officeholders in Seattle privately acknowledge that the comb ination of bloggers, talk radio and local think tanks like the Evergreen Freedom Foundation have helped skeptics of the election's validity win the public relations war. Evergreen president Bob Williams says his grou p isn't focused on overturning Ms Gregoire's election so much as on hig hlighting the obvious problems in the vote count that cry out for perman ent legislative fixes. He notes the public is paying attention: A poll t aken last week by Seattle's KING-TV found that by a 20-point margin stat e residents back a new election, and by 53% to 36% they don't think Mr Rossi should concede. Seattle Times columnist Joni Balter says the attack on the vote count by Republican-leaning media "is by now a near-military operation--air, land and sea." She blames radio hosts Kirby Wilbur, John Carlson and Mike Si egel for keeping listeners updated and in a constant state of outrage. " There's a lot to be outraged about," responds Mr Carlson, an unsuccessf ul candidate for governor in 2000. "Last week, I did 13 out of my show's 15 hours on the election and people wanted more." In his new book, "Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation," radio host and law professor Hugh Hewitt calls the new media a form of "open- source journalism" in which gatekeepers can no longer control what reach es the public. Readers and listeners interact with bloggers and talk sho w hosts so that a free market of ideas and information can emerge. "Blog s analyzed the Washington state election shenanigans in a more sophistic ated and comprehensive way than the mainstream media," he told me. "When a swarm of blogs and new media focus on a story it can fundamentally al ter the general public's understanding of an event or person. Ask John K erry, Trent Lott, Tom Daschle and soon-to-retire CBS anchor Dan Rather i f they think the new media changed people's perceptions of them." Similarly, when Christine Gregoire takes the oath of office as governor o n Wednesday, she will st...
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