Dawn of the Dead

Chris VanceWashington State Governor’s Race

The Saga Continues

In an election fraught with problems and strife, now new charges of impropriety have come to light.

The dead have spoken, seemingly, and their clear choice for governor is Christine Gregoire.

According to the King County elections manager, as many as 22 dead people voted in the election last November. These cases are under investigation and criminal charges may be filed in at least three of the instances.

That tidbit, problems with provisional ballots and also the fact that King County may have had several thousand more votes than actual registered voters all has the state Republicans throwing a hissy fit.

Chris Vance, state Republican Party Chair, and his cronies are now slinging thinly veiled charges of voter fraud and demanding a new election as a remedy. They also appear to be on the verge of filing lawsuits with the goal of invalidating the results of the election.

In that election, much to the Republican’s chagrin, Christine Gregoire won by 129 votes.

Unfortunately, when reconciling the votes last week, King County initially had as many as 3,500 more votes cast than there are actual registered voters. As of today, the un-reconciled number was reportedly down to around 1,200 votes.

King County officials have stated that a total of 1,200 un-reconciled ballots would be in-line with the results of previous elections and is nothing that would form the basis for a court to order a new election. While this may be true, apparently the votes from dead people may be more problematic.
The whole thing is a rather sticky wicket.

Personally, I believe we ought to settle for nothing less than 100% accuracy in our elections. In this day and age, nothing less is acceptable.

How would it play if your bank screwed up your account, and then told you, “Well, it’s 95% accurate! So we lost a couple deposits? What do you want? Perfection?” Or maybe if your employer only paid you for most of the hours you worked? I don’t think either of those situations would fly.

Elections should be no different. Anything less than 100% accuracy is intolerable.

Even so, I strongly believe that these current problems should not invalidate the recent Governor’s election.

If the Republicans truly want a replay of the Governor’s race election, that’s great, but we shouldn’t stop there. To be fair, each election in the state needs to be re-examined and in every instance where the un-reconciled amount of ballots is enough to sway the outcome of that contest, then those elections need to be redone as well.

It should be all or nothing. Either we accept the results of the Governor’s race, or we re-examine them all – replay the entire state election.

All races are equally important. That is the only fair and proper way to do this.
But like I said, I still do not believe that a revote is appropriate at this time.
Sam Reed, the Secretary of State – a Republican – has a much better idea, which centers around prospective reforms in the election process. This is the way we should go.

By harping about a revote, Dino Rossi and Chris Vance have damaged their credibility beyond repair. Through the course of this whole ugly saga, what’s become readily apparent is that the GOP truly cares very little about the wishes of the voters, much less determining the will of the people. What they care about is winning the Governorship – at whatever cost.

The whole thing is sour grapes, period.

And the sooner they admit that and move on, the better off the whole state will be.