King County Democrats

Read the background and find out what you can do. Included is a detailed e-mail sent from David McDonald, a WA Dems DNC member who has been very active in the recount

-----Original Message-----
From: David McDonald [[]mailto:david@wa-democrats.org]
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 8:15 PM
To: party-leaders@wa-democrats.org
Cc: paul@wa-democrats.org
Subject: Background on "discrepancies"

Following is a somewhat lengthy email I prepared today with background
information on the "mystery voters" nonsense the GOP is pumping out. We'll
send out a shorter form tomorrow with talking points and bullets, but I wanted
you to have this version as a resource as quickly as we could get it to you.

Bottom line: Christine Gregoire won this election fair and square. We need to
call our legislators and demand they do their duty and certify her rather than
waste time and money on GOP attempts to get a do-over.

Anyway, here's the longer form with more backup:

Dear Democratic Friend:

You have no doubt seen the recent hysterical news releases from the Republican
Party and its allies claiming that there are large discrepancies between the
number of ballots counted in various counties during the 2004 election and the
current preliminary summary reports of voters whose voting histories have been
credited with voting in the election. I have been involved in watching
elections and election counts for 30 years. It is deeply concerning to me that
the Republicans are so irresponsibly flinging around misleading and irrelevant
information. Here are some basic facts that I urge you to remember when you
hear these Republican accusations:

1. The relevant question is whether ballots were issued to people entitled to
receive them and were the ballots handed in by persons entitled to cast them.
However, the Republicans are not looking at information that addresses this
question. The reports the Republicans point to are after the fact secondary
reports. That is, they are reviewing reports from voter registration data
bases. These data bases are not the actual record of who was issued a ballot
in the general election and who voted and they are not related to certification
of an election. The actual record of who was issued a ballot is contained in
the poll books and absentee ballots issuance records. The voter registration
data base is updated, after the election, to record the information contained
in the poll books and absentee records and is used in future years by campaigns
to generate mailing lists and news sources to determine candidates’ voting
records. As with all transfers of large volumes of information from one set of
forms to another, errors can happen and at some point it is not productive to
invest the time and effort to track all of them down.

2. The Legislature has enacted safeguards that ensure that ballots are only
issued to those entitled to vote. These safeguards are in place on election
day and prior to election day. All ballot issuance is done under public and
bipartisan observation. There is no evidence at this point from anyone that
there is any failure to implement and follow these safeguards. Stated simply,
there is no reason to believe that any ballots in this election have been cast
in violation of law. Whether or not a voter’s registration record—after the
fact—is correctly credited to reflect that the voter participated in the
election is irrelevant to the question whether the ballots counted were valid
ballots. Republican Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said in the PI today,
when asked about reconciling the number of ballots counted in Clark County and
the number of voters credited with voting, that he has no plans to try to
account for 452 extra poll, absentee and provisional votes.
"It would be a huge task," Kimsey said. "You are looking through 121,679
absentee ballots, affidavit envelopes and through poll books where 50,598
voters cast their ballots.
"The controls that are in place in the election process ensure that only
registered voters are going to receive a ballot. While I understand the concern
that comes from seeing two different numbers, the controls are at the front
end."

3. There is no indication that any ballots have been improperly introduced into
the counts after election day. The total number of ballots counted state-wide
in the initial count (2,883,499) is almost exactly the same as the total number
of ballots counted in the manual recount (2,884,783). The difference (1284) is
attributable to publicly reported adjustments that relate to situations such as
the 7 provisional ballots that were found in Whatcom County just prior to the
manual recount, the 224 ballots that were found in Snohomish County during the
machine recount, the 52 ballots that were found in Grant County during the
machine recount and the absentee ballots in King County that were the subject
of a unanimous Supreme Court decision in late December.

4. The ballots have now been counted fully, by bipartisan auditors, canvassing
boards, workers and volunteers, in compliance with the long standing procedures
and rules that the Legislature has set forth for determining who is the winner
of a state-wide election. That winner is now known. Her name is Christine
Gregoire.

5. In fact, the ballots have been counted by the most accurate mechanism there
is for counting large numbers of ballots: a manual recount that followed a
machine recount. In such a count, every precinct is manually counted by teams
who must cross-verify their counts. The result is compared to the results from
the prior machine count and any difference between the two is investigated and
resolved. This approach combines the benefits of both types of count and is
far more accurate than either a machine count alone or a manual count alone.
This is not my opinion. It is the opinion of the Seattle Times and the
Secretary of State’s office, as reported in the Seattle Times 12/29/04 “your
questions answered” article:

“Under Washington state law, the hand recount is reserved for only the closest
elections. John Pearson, the state's deputy elections director, said the most
accurate recount is when a machine recount is combined with a manual one, such
as in this election, so the counts can be compared and rectified.”

6. Despite repeated attempts by Republicans to claim that machine counts are the
most accurate, the facts just don’t support the claim. Machine counts are
inherently inaccurate for at least two reasons. First, the hardware itself will
misread ballots. During the recounts, the Skagit Valley Herald obtained
information from the manufacturer of Kitsap County’s voting systems that 1 in
every 10,000 ballots could be expected to be misread and the vote credited to
the wrong candidate. Second, machines cannot fully determine voter intent. At
best, machines can read (subject to the errors above) ballots that meet certain
technical requirements as to ink used and form of marking. These technical
requirements are intended to facilitate machine counting. But the law in
Washington—and our long tradition—is that the voter’s intent, not the voter’s
ability to make it easy for a machine to count ballots—is what determines
whether a vote is counted. The Legislature has made this the standard and
charged human canvassing boards—not machines—with determining voter intent.
The inherent inaccuracy of machine counts is shown by the fact that over 4100
ballots that machines had failed to read were determined by canvassing boards
around the state to be valid votes for one of the three candidates for
governor.

This was a close race but it has a clear winner determined according to long
standing state law by bipartisan teams of election officials, workers and
observers counted the ballots in accordance with state law. It is time to move
on beyond this election and begin to address the problems and challenges facing
our state.

Call your legislator with a simple message: Chris Gregoire won the election.
Certify her and let her get on with addressing our state’s needs.

David T. McDonald
Recount Director
DNC Member
Washington State Democratic Party

Posted on: 1/5/2005 1:05:00 AM by robdolin@wuxx.com
URL for more info: http://www.wa-democrats.org

5 Comment(s)

Re 1/6/05 Seattle PI article by Neil Modie

Wild accusations by GOP
Chris Vance continues to blow smoke with wild accusations. How could Republican appointed King County election worker Joe O'Donnell say that he personally witnessed about 150 to 300 provisional ballots go straight into the AccuVote tabulating machine? Mr. O'Donnel most likely was a checker of the polling operations NOT a poll judge I was a judge responsible for the AccuVote machine at our Polling place and NOT ONE provisional ballot was allowed to go through the machine.We had approximately 980 ballots that were tabulated by the machine, about 300 absentee ballots and 75 provisional ballots. If the poll book showed that a voter was sent an absentee ballot, and he gave the excuse that he never received it, he was allowed to complete a provisional ballot. First the Poll Judge working that precinct folded the ballot and creased it (so that it would not go through the AccuVote machine) and noted in the poll book that he received a provisional ballot. Our Poll site Inspector completed additional information on each provisional voter on the outside of the special envelope, made sure that the voter signed his name,and handed it me where I deposited it in the side pocket of the AccuVote machine.
Posted on: 1/6/2005 7:30:23 PM by wesm7@iglide.net
URL for more info:

Re 1/6/05 Seattle PI article by Neil Modie

!! CALL THE TOLL-FREE LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE !!

1-800-562-6000
Do the right thing -- call the toll-free Legislative Hotline and ask your representatives to support the election of Christine Gregoire. Thank you.
Posted on: 1/5/2005 5:48:42 PM by suzie2004@comcast.net
URL for more info:

Speak out!

combat the noise machine
Enough of the GOP having all the news. Write letters to the editor, call talk shows. Speak up for the Gregoire victory.
Posted on: 1/5/2005 3:25:32 PM by bob@robertsshields.com
URL for more info:

Take Action: Call your legislator

Call your legislator with a simple message: Chris Gregoire won the election. Certify her and let her get on with addressing our state’s needs.

Posted on: 1/5/2005 9:52:35 AM by robdolin@wuxx.com
URL for more info: