"Error discovery could give Gregoire election" - Some hints for Ohio too

<<SNIP>>
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002118808_recount14m.html

King County election officials yesterday admitted a major error in tallying votes in the governor's race that could reverse the results and make Christine Gregoire the winner in the hand recount now under way.

The discovery that 561 votes were improperly disqualified super-heated backers of Republican Dino Rossi, who for weeks have worried that King County, a Democratic stronghold, would find a way to give Gregoire the edge.

Republicans are now "absolutely convinced that King County is trying to steal this election," said Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance.

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I think this also hints to the reactions we will get out of Ohio as discoveries are made in various counties in question... It's going to get nasty! Get ready for a ride...

:)

(god I miss my hockey)

we are ready for them this time!!

"Bring them on!" Good grief, everytime I say that, it reminds me of that Chimp saying it, acting like he's all tough! <shivers>

I was thinking. I am too angry and too upset to want it any other way. I need the fight. We need the fight.

And my response to them is 'Fuck the Repukes'!!!

Wait until good democrats (and the world) learns of how *co stole the Presidential election.

Then you win.

I was watching it last night. Some people were given provisional ballots because their sigs were in question. The thing is that the precinct/county didn't have a sig on file to compare. Instead of getting a valid sig to make the comparison, the provisionals were just not counted at all.

Just not in the computer. By not bothering to put it in the computer, then not bothering to go look at the file, they were able to steal votes.

Pretty amazing stuff!
<<SNIP>>
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002118805_phillips14m.html

Larry Phillips, chairman of the Metropolitan King County Council, was at a Democratic Party campaign office in Fremont Sunday preparing to visit people whose absentee votes had been rejected because of signature problems.

Reading down a list of disqualified voters in his Magnolia neighborhood, he saw a familiar name. "I yelled at the table, 'Yikes, it's me!' " When he contacted election officials to find out why his vote wasn't counted, their answer raised alarm bells: Because there wasn't a copy of his signature in the election computer system, his vote had been tossed out along with those of voters who failed to sign their absentee-ballot envelopes or whose John Hancocks didn't match those on file.

...

That computer search turned up a total of 561 wrongfully rejected votes — and yesterday found the paper ballots stored along with ballots rejected for missing or mismatched signatures.
Election workers are now comparing 561 signatures on ballot envelopes with signatures on registration cards. Those that match will go to the county canvassing board tomorrow, where Logan will propose adding the votes to the manual recount.

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I don't see how the Repubs can possibly argue against looking at these provisionals. And thanks for the clarification of the details.

There is no way to know without counting numbers twice, who really won. The only way to find errors is to count twice and compare the totals. It's basis Accounting 101. The only accounting system in the whole country that doesn't double check the results is our Electoral System. Can't imagine why?

For Republicans, it showed that counties can correct errors on their own — and don't need a court order to tell them how.
...
"It's either gross incompetence or vote fraud," Vance said. "I guess we should just keep expecting King County to find votes until they find enough."

So, in the same breath, they say both that everything is good because counties will correct themselves, AND that by correcting themselves, there is huge voter fraud going on.

Typical republican double-talk.

The funniest part is that they're doing the same thing here that they did to us in Florida 2000, except we got to the courts first. They said in florida that the recount should be stopped because the counting method was different in each county (equal protection). We went to court here to make the counting method is the same for the recount here (equal protection), and now they say that you shouldn't go to court? Wow... "Do as I say, not as I do"

And those are just his nice qualities :D

This is very encouraging news. The fact that the GOP is pissed about these found ballots is great.

sit on this finger, GOP bitches! We are gonna make life hell for you for the next 4 years and beyond.

One thing the repugs are VERY good at is the little sound bites that resonate with the public.

"I guess we should just keep expecting King County to find votes until they find enough" is one of them. It's simple, clean, easy to remember. It also leaves the impression that Dems are simply manipulating the system trying to get the result they want because they didn't get it on election day.

It highlights our problem, we are reacting. The Repugs won on Election Day and no matter what we do, it will be in reaction to that.

Having been declared winners, it will be very difficult for us to dislodge the feeling that they DID win and we are just working the system to get a different result.

"absolutely convinced that King County is trying to steal this election" is another. This was used in 2000, Gore is trying to steal the election.

In reality, the repugs manipulated the election on election day and have fought as hard as they can against counting actual votes legally cast by actual citizens because if those votes were counted, the repugs would lose.

"At some point people's patience just runs out." is another. Here they are preying upon people's concerns that this will just drag out for ever and ever.

All of these work because we are in a reactive mode. Because they stole the election when no one (except us) was watching and now we have to prove it, after the fact.

We need to find some way to word our work that takes it out of the reactive mode and puts in into the proactive. Make what we are doing now the important thing and what they did on election day history.

When asked if we believe the election was stolen we should respond "They stole the election? Of course, that's old news. What we are doing now is working hard making sure all of the stolen votes are counted."


We need to work at our own slogans and sayings that will have the same effect in the minds of the general public, or at least make the repugs seem less reasonable.


"They say they stole it fair and square. We're just checking to make sure" would be a good one.

Anyway, this is good news, but mark my words, thousands of angry repugs are going to begin protesting the 'theft' of the Washington election and the media will cover that fraud story.
If nothing else, they will work very hard to give us a bad reputation as troublemakers.

Now, that's not a bad thing, really, if we continue on and prove fraud. All whistle blowers are trouble-some and difficult.

We should be prepared, and we should take the tack that the election was stolen and we are simply counting the stolen votes. This would force the repugs to claim that the votes weren't stolen, which then leads to the question "if you didn't steal them, why weren't they counted?".

Enough for now. Very happy about the found votes.

"They say they stole it fair and square. We're just checking to make sure" would be a good one.

I like it!