WP: Judges Exclude 26% of Ballots in Va. Recount (setback to Dem Deeds)

Judges Exclude 26% of Ballots in Va. Recount
By Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 10, 2005; Page B03


A three-judge panel in Richmond decided yesterday that more than 500,000 ballots cast in the attorney general's race will not be recounted and run again through tabulating machines.

The ruling was a setback to Democratic Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, who trails Republican Del. Robert F. McDonnell by 323 votes out of 1.94 million cast in the Nov. 8 election. After McDonnell was certified the winner, Deeds requested the recount, scheduled to take place over two days beginning Dec. 20.

Joseph Kearfott, Deeds's attorney, had argued that all paper ballots counted on optical scan machines should be rerun through tabulators to ensure an accurate recount. The Deeds campaign had hoped to pick up some "undervotes" that had not been counted by the machines.

"Here there is a meaningful chance that a full recount . . . could result in the difference in the election," Kearfott said in court, according to the Associated Press. "You owe it to the candidates and to the state of Virginia."

"Undervotes" is the term used when a machine records no vote. That can be the result of a voter's decision not to vote for either candidate. But in some cases, Kearfott said, they occur when a voter mistakenly marks the ballot outside the lines or in some other fashion that the tabulator cannot recognize....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120901883.html

Republican judges??

the sooner the RW gets rid of paper ballots the sooner the Revolution of 2000 will be made permanent.

It's the manner of the recount that's in question. For example, no one knows how to recount electronic machines with no hard record.

(updating as I search)

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1996/03/smoking_sidebar.html
For example, when it was disclosed that the judge selected to try the case, Theodore J. Markow, had a brother who was a plant manager for Philip Morris, ABC's legal team declined to request another judge.

http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn.356/virginiasexlaw.html
While the Virginia Legislature continues to haggle about whether to repeal the state’s sodomy law or reform it to reflect constitutional limitations on the state’s ability to penalize private consensual sex, the state’s Supreme Court acted on January 14 to strike down a criminal statute against “fornication” between unmarried adults, relying on the Supreme Court’s 2003 sodomy ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.

The case came to Virginia’s high court as a side-issue in a lawsuit filed by a woman against her former boyfriend, who she claims infected her with herpes. Muguet Martin and Kris Ziherl lived together in what the court calls “a sexually active relationship” from October 2001 until early November 2003. Martin experienced symptoms that led her to seek medical care in June 2003, and was diagnosed with herpes. This led to a break up with Ziherl, and ultimately she sued him, claiming he knew he was infected and contagious when he had sex with her.

Ziherl’s attorney came up with an interesting defense tactic. Relying on a 1990 Virginia Supreme Court decision that bans plaintiffs from recovering damages for personal injury sustained while engaging in an illegal activity, the attorney argued that Martin could not sue because her sexual activity was illegal under Virginia law. The fornication statute said that only people who are married to each other can engage in sexual intercourse, an ironic twist on the state’s popular tourism slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers.”

Surprisingly, the trial judge, Theodore J. Markow of Richmond City Circuit Court, agreed with Ziherl’s argument and dismissed the case. Markow refused to apply Lawrence v. Texas to this situation, reasoning that the state could have valid reasons for prohibiting heterosexual sex outside of marriage, such as protecting public health and encouraging marriage for the procreation of children.


http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:rrsxnZR0EwcJ:www.tricities.com/servlet/Satellite%3Fpagename%3DTRI%252FMGArticle%252FTRI_BasicArticle%26c%3DMGArticle%26cid%3D1031774796412%26path%3D/news+%22Larry+Kirksey%22&hl=en&client=firefox-a
Kirksey, 53, was selected to fill retired Judge Charles Flannagan’s seat on the 28th Judicial Circuit, which covers Bristol and Washington and Smyth counties.

Kirksey, a Bristol native and a 1975 graduate of the University of Tennessee law school, was appointed March 10 by the state legislature. He had served as commonwealth’s attorney since January 2002.

Kirksey spent four years on the City Council in the 1990s and was a shareholder in the PennStuart law firm and the firm of Woodward, Mills and Flannagan.

Kirksey’s friends and colleagues said they’re sure he can make the transition.

"We have all the faith, trust and confidence in the world in you," said state Sen. William Wampler, R-Bristol.

They are just talking about running the ballots through the optical scan tabulator again, but



Why would that be?

And to get the rest of the way through the looking glass,



Hand counting is now more arbitrary than the whim and technical ability of a programmer?

edit to add:





Oooookayyyy. Let's see here. In Viginia Beach, the Dem lost 57% to 43%, 54,885 to 41,198. So, take 43% of the 1393 undervotes, and you get 599 votes. OK, maybe he wouldn't get all of them, but hey, it is certainly within reason that the votes could be there.
What standard is being used to decide not to count these? It wouldn't be an arbitrary decision would it?

A pre-programmed computer or your own lying eyes?

and we use optical scanners. We know of undervotes, some marked as a write in for Deeds that were not counted for Deeds in the machine. You would only pick this up by the observers there, watching each ballot as it's refed. I was due to be an observer, but this sounds like we won't be observing much in my county.

explained well enough in the article. I hope Deeds is investigating appealing the ruling.

What standard is being used to decide not to count these?

Would that be akin to the circus created by the republican operatives in Florida 2000?

"If you allow a recount, we will create a circus."

before the Democrats start to understand what is happening.

Are they really so dumb?

How the heck can you have a recount without recounting all of the votes cast? I don't get it. Sounds most fishy ( and republican ) to me.
Aren't there good dem attornies in that state? What is going on, that we can't get a clean recount, or a clean election, where repubs control things? This is dangerous, when the will of the people in a democracy is not heeded.

not wanting a full recount he only wanted the democratic leaning areas recounted, * wanted a full recount. i read once and i dont know where that if they had done the whole state Gore would have one, but he wanted limited recounts, which he did not win with.

so maybe they only wanted the machine counting, and that most likely would not have changed the vote, a hand count would, but that leaves a lot of opinion on the votes, the opinion of who the vote was meant for. i believe in paper ballots and machine counting but NO hand counts, it takes away trying to read a mind though a piece of paper

They're refusing to recount votes from heavily African-American areas. At least they haven't started sending the FBI to black people's homes to hassle them, like in Florida.

are two of the "redder" areas, frankly that's why I don't trust them! Our registrar is one of the most conservative in the state. I'm not sure what is being done elsewhere (like the City of Richmond, heavily Democratic) so I've got some questions out to friends to find out what's going on. Hope to know more later on today.

where we don't count the numbers twice in order to make sure the numbers are correct.

this is totally ridiculous

...I really hope Deeds pulls this out, but considering he's running for DISTRICT ATTORNEY if he doesn't have the legal knowhow and pull to wage a competant legal challenge then maybe he doesn't deserve it. Not that a Repug DA is at all desirable, but he's a career lawyer for goodness sake.

:shrug:

over yet so niether side has won or lost the legal war. The ruling only applies to a portion of the ballots to be recounted. If you read the story you will see that. and with a million + or -ballots left to count anything could happen.

Also, the Repo {b}Attorney General{/b} Candidate isn't a career prosecutor, just another politician with a law degree. The link is to his bio.
http://dela.state.va.us/dela/MemBios.nsf/0/037149e916603dd185256dfd00535baa?OpenDocument

The main problem with your reasoning is that winning or losing parts of a civil case over election law with a unique set of circumstances and players isn't in of itself any kind of criteria to judge the abilities of either litigant to be Attorney General.

The fact that The Repo wants to exclude ballots to recount smells and is just plain wrong. If you believe that makes him a more able Attorney General, then I'm not sure why.

He does have some fine lawyers on the team and throughout the state. We'll see what comes of this today and Monday, but the 3 judge panel DOES have the benefit of deciding what procedures the recount takes. Don't know if they can fight this.

I hope Deeds can fight it. The silver lining is that Deeds came so very close to winning in Va. That's an encouraging sign for the future.