Seattle is not Washington State

[catbirdseat]

Voter

[MisterMo]

Both hand counts and machine counts are inherently inaccurate, albeit for entirely differnt reasons. You could count and recount and recount the ballots for a month of Sundays and get different outputs every time, even if you thought you were recounting the same way each time.

 

To me, neither Dino nor Christine has "won" the election via statistics. However, Dino has "currently" won the election by law. Operative word is "currently."

 

You are entirely correct. Whoever ultimately "wins" will neither be able to claim a mandate for change, the status quo, or anything else as justification for their agenda.

 

For those not entirely sick of my recurrent'memory lane' bullshit I miss the old original voting machines: those piano sized contraptions where you pulled levers. They produced gigantic strips of paper that showed each vote cast and totals. These were posted at the polling place after each election. There was a element of honesty in that; you could go where you voted & see the results for your precinct.

[Duchess]

BTW, Duchess that parrot on your shoulder looks kinda skanky.

 

My parrot deeply resents such cheap slander...

[treknclime]

Fair-weather...good to see you're back in fighting spirits! Get on it!

[Fairweather]

BTW, that Duchess parrot on your shoulder looks kinda skanky.

 

My parrot deeply resents such cheap slander...

 

 

You should be ashamed keeping an endangered Parrot species captive for your selfish human amusement. Have you planted any Lynx hair in the Gifford Pinchot lately?

[treknclime]

FW...is YOUR bird endangered??

[Fairweather]

It was born and raised in captivity. I've thought about releasing him but the airfare to the South Pacific is a bit too pricey right now... and I don't think he would submit to a TSA pat-down at the airport.

[Duchess]

Remember kids! Planting lynx hair on the Gifford Pinchot is a felony!

 

I also deeply resent such slander...

[snoboy]

Not to get too personal, [snip] so here's back at him.

 

 

So you can't win through logic so you resort to personal attacks.

 

BTW it's well known that Carl Sagan loved to smoke pot, and he had a PhD in Physics.

 

AK, you are the master of the personal attack, so don't cry when someone comes back at you in kind.

 

Hey FW - a little primer on the graemlins:

 

- laughing guy (or chica)

 

- crying guy...

 

Here's the quiz, you may use the book, was AlpineK laughing or crying at your insult above???

 

welcome back, we missed you

[AlpineK]

Not to get too personal, but I've met him, and frankly, I just don't believe it. (Unless we're talking autism?) His processor was long ago dimmed by large quantities of THC resin. He likes to hurl insults, so here's back at him.

 

 

So you can't win through logic so you resort to personal attacks.

 

BTW it's well known that Carl Sagan loved to smoke pot, and he had a PhD in Physics.

 

AK, you are the master of the personal attack, so don't cry when someone comes back at you in kind.

 

Carl Sagan, while certainly adept at translating astro-physics into laymans terms, wasn't that highly regarded by his peers. (Maybe because they could see the dulling effect of his habit?)

 

I'm not upset that you attacked me; quite the contrary. I think it's funny to watch you flounder.

 

Speaking of floundering, you said earlier that the State would have to foot the bill for any recount. This is not true at all. For a hand recount the democratic party will have to pay 25 cents per vote counted. Should the results of this recount overturn the election then the state would pay for an additional recount. So there is only one recount that will definitely happen and the democrats are the only ones who will pay for it.

 

Face it you don't know what you're talking about, and the only thing you've proved is that you are an idiot republican shill. It's a good thing you've never smoked pot cause you obviously can't afford to lose any grey matter.

[Fairweather]

 

Speaking of floundering, you said earlier that the State would have to foot the bill for any recount. This is not true at all. For a hand recount the democratic party will have to pay 25 cents per vote counted. Should the results of this recount overturn the election then the state would pay for an additional recount. So there is only one recount that will definitely happen and the democrats are the only ones who will pay for it.

 

Face it you don't know what you're talking about, and the only thing you've proved is that you are an idiot republican shill. It's a good thing you've never smoked pot cause you obviously can't afford to lose any grey matter.

 

Once again AK, you are the one who is uninformed. The Dems will ask for a recount in selected King County precincts only. (Likely Freemont, Capitol Hill areas) They will have to pay for this portion of the recount. Once they have "mined out" enough votes to overturn the result of the outcome, THE STATE (ie: taxpayers) will be forced to pay for a statewide recount by law.

 

Once again, as you seem to be especially slow with this concept: The Democrats will likely not request a statewide recount that they would have to pay for. They will request a recount in a precinct most likely to overturn the statewide result thereby forcing us to pay for the vast remainder of this monumental task.

 

I would put this into a numeric formula for you, but I lack the proper DeVry/University of Phoenix credentials that you possess.

 

 

...and unless you're a Brit, that's G-R-A-Y matter.

[foraker]

Maybe they learned about wasting money from Ken Starr. ;-)

[AlpineK]

You obviously can't read or do math Fairweather.

 

The Dems will have to pay for every vote they recount.

 

Now here's the tricky part where you failings in logic and math are highlighted.

 

If and only if the results of the recount, which the dems will pay for, show that Gregoire did win the governers race will a statewide recount paid by taxpayers be triggered.

 

Yes the democrats may choose to only pay for a recount in a couple of areas where they feel they have the best advantage, but I would expect no less from republicans. Furthermore if the paid recount does cast doubt on the results I think it's only fair for the state to pay for a complete recount.

 

It seems to me that if Rossi really did win then you wont have to worry about any of your tax money being spent on recounts. If there's a reason to doubt his victory then it's only fair for taxpayers to fund a full recount in the name of democracy.

 

Your notion that the democrats can, "mine out," votes is fucked up. the votes are there or they aren't. Perhaps your low self esteem leads you to this paranoid view.

 

As far as I know neither DeVry or the U of Phoenix offer a BS in mathematics.

 

You really did live downwind from the Asarco smelter when you were a child didn't you.

[EWolfe]

One thing about all of this is that I feel like my vote for governor really counted!

 

 

 

We now resume the regularly scheduled flaming

[Gary_Yngve]

...but you see, one candidate did win. Dino Rossi. The election was not a tie, and anyone who wants to put forth that argument is mathematically challenged. Give it up Seattle libs! Washington State voters have spoken, and they say it's time for a change. If Christine Gregoire wants to drag this out; fine. The whole Democratic party will suffer the consequences in the next election.

 

NO

 

If the number of voters who intended for their ballotw to count towards Rossi is greater than the number of voters who intended for their ballots to count towards Gregoire, then Dino won.

 

But what we have now is a machine interpretation of voters' intents. And machines aren't perfect.

[Fairweather]

 

But what we have now is a machine interpretation of voters' intents. And machines aren't perfect.

 

And humans are? Especially partisan King County election officials? And a canvassing board therein dominated by....Democrats?

 

Machines have no agenda. Humans do.

 

Me thinks Yngve makes poor argument and smokes pot with AlpineK.

[AlpineK]

Umm Fairweather, machines are built by and programed by humans who can display any number of human characteristics. Partisanship is on that list.

 

I'm sure if you look into it there is a fair system for doing a manual recount. Even if there isn't there are going to be so many people watching the recount that it will have to be.

 

All those lawyers all primed up for a fight over the presidential race are looking for something to do. But I suppose you republicans won't hire them since you all are so against trial lawyers.

Edited November 29, 2004 by AlpineK

[Snafflehunter]

I'm sure if you look into it there is a fair system for doing a manual recount. Even if there isn't there are going to be so many people watching the recount that it will have to be.

 

Now that is a logical argument. Who could refute those facts?

[cracked]

Even if there isn't there are going to be so many people watching the recount that it will have to be.

[snoboy]

 

But what we have now is a machine interpretation of voters' intents. And machines aren't perfect.

 

And humans are? Especially partisan King County election officials? And a canvassing board therein dominated by....Democrats?

 

Machines have no agenda. Humans do.

 

Me thinks Yngve makes poor argument and smokes pot with AlpineK.

 

FW, duuuude! You're starting to sound like a liberal with these conspiracy theories...

[cj001f]

Machines have no agenda. Humans do.

 

So if the person programming the machine decides to decrease the required hole/mark size by say, 1% - which would decrease the votes alloted, this wouldn't qualify as an agenda?

[AlpineK]

Even if there isn't there are going to be so many people watching the recount that it will have to be.

 

Laugh it up. The fact is that any recount system that's in place would be something that both democrats and republicans agreed to. The party in control might think about imposing rules that scewed the results to their favor however most politicians are smart enough to know that they wont be in power forever and payback is a bitch.

 

For those extra paranoid conspiracy theory folks like Fairweather you have the added benifit of having lots of lawyers from the republican party who were geared up for a presidential recount and now they have nothing better to do then go watch the recount in Washington state.

 

But then again maybe the Trilateral Commision, the queen of England, and the Rothchilds are pulling the strings in the governers race.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

So if the person programming the machine decides to decrease the required hole/mark size by say, 1% - which would decrease the votes alloted, this wouldn't qualify as an agenda?

 

I'm a lot more worried about manipulation of vote tallies on the back-end than some malicious programming on the UI. Even barring intentional fraud, there are a multiltude of issues including scalability, data integrity, network connectivity, and software defects (bugs).

[chucK]

There's some data on vote counting in this article

 

Wolter K, Jergovic D, Moore W, et al.

Reliability of the uncertified ballots in the 2000 presidential election in Florida

AMERICAN STATISTICIAN 57 (1): 1-14 FEB 2003

 

One tidbit: out of 2357091 ballots investigated that were counted by optical scanning, 7202 were judged by the machine to have no mark. Of these, 2603 (0.11 % of the original total) were judged by human judges to have had a vote marked in. A 99% confidence interval for percentage of votes missed by optical scan is 0.105% to 0.116%.

 

To put it another way, that's 105 to 116 votes missed for every 100,000 votes cast via optical scan machines (I focus on optical scan ballots here, as that is how it works where I vote. Some machines had worse accuracy.)

 

Extrapoloating to all of WA state, that's more than 3000 votes just plain missed. This says nothing of other types of mistakes that can happen (like those 720 uncounted ballots "found" by King County election officials during the recount).

 

Bad news is previous studies seem to show hand counts even less accurate. See this paper. So, no solution there.

 

Once a vote is this close, with this many votes, the final result is determined by random chance. The "choice of the voters", in terms of which candidate is above the magic 50% line, is impossible to determine.

 

What I think would be great is if after a hand recount it was determined that there were enough votes "found" that put Gregoire ahead. But then Rossi ends up winning because Gregoire's office missed the deadline to submit the findings!

[OnTop_of_Poo]

As climbers, we particularly know that life isn't fair, but we deal and move on. Like a bad call at a sports game that causes your team to lose, Chris lost. You can count and count and count until you get what you want, but 2 counts are good enough for me. How long must the STATE endure?

 

I read this today, though I'm a dem at heart, I wish Chris would step down and let the state move forward.

 

By JOHN CARLSON

GUEST COLUMNIST

 

What's the difference between Christine Gregoire and me?

 

I lost one count for governor. Gregoire has now lost two.

 

Yes, it was close -- a photo finish. But it was not, as she is telling people, a tie. Dino Rossi won it fairly, he won it squarely and he won it twice. Yet Gregoire is calling for a third count done by hand because she wants "accuracy."

 

Actually, she wants 43 votes. And a hand count is easier to get there, because hand counts are less accurate than machines. Those who understand the process of running an election, including our two previous secretaries of state, agree with Democrat Dean Logan, the head of King County's elections office, who said, "When you're talking about close to 900,000 pieces of paper, I think the machine count is going to be more accurate than a manual count." By the way, though no one's saying it out loud, it's also easier to cheat with hand counts.

 

Are machines perfect? No, which is why a recount was necessary in the first place. Yet after nearly 2.9 million votes were recounted, the results were almost the same. The main reason Rossi's margin slipped from 261 to 42 is that King County "enhanced" votes rejected by the machines. In 38 of the state's 39 counties, only 208 net votes were added to either Rossi or Gregoire in the recount. Then came King County, which represents a third of the electorate.

Gregoire netted a gain of 245 votes -- more than the rest of the state for both candidates combined.

 

Gregoire is no longer acting like someone who wants "every vote counted"; she's acting like someone who wants the votes counted again and again, in different ways if necessary, to produce the results she's almost but not quite getting.

 

More than a political race is at stake here. Washington long has been known as a clean place in which to do politics, but that reputation evaporates if Rossi becomes the only candidate in state history (and one of the only ones in U.S. history) to win an election on the first count, win it again on the second and then be denied the oath of office by a third count that used a less reliable method for counting the ballots.

 

The anger would extend far beyond the Republican Party. A KING-5 poll shows that 66 percent of the people believe Rossi is the winner. Only 24 percent -- less than the Democrat base vote in Washington -- believe Gregoire won the race. Even some newspapers that endorsed her are now calling on her to put the state's interests ahead of her own and concede the race.

 

That's not too surprising. Former Secretary of State Ralph Munro said last week that he would have urged Rossi to concede and unify the state if he, rather than Gregoire, lost both counts. I would have done the same. It's not like he or she isn't there to fight another day. John Thune lost a U.S. Senate race by 513 (suspicious) votes in South Dakota in 2002, only to come back this year and defeat Tom Daschle. Maria Cantwell was bounced out of Congress in 1994 after one term. She came back in 2000 and now sits in the Senate.

 

But never mind the candidates for a moment. A third count won't erase doubts about the results, it will raise them, and that hurts Washington State. It means lawyers and judges ultimately decide the winner, not the voters. Gregoire should do what a real leader would do: Instruct her party that the race is over, concede the race to Rossi so he can form a government and then regroup and re-emerge later. There's life after losing a governor's race, I promise.

 

John Carlson hosts an afternoon talk show on KVI radio in Seattle. He was the Republican nominee for governor in 2000.