More Shenanigans in Washington... State

I didn't post it yesterday, but the Lord of Truth sent along John Fund's solid recap of the continuing mess in the Washington governor's race. I've said all along that the election proved Hugh Hewitt right, and Fund gives some more details...

In Washington state, the errors by election officials have been compared to the antics of Inspector Clouseau, only clumsier. At least 1,200 more votes were counted in Seattle's King County than the number of individual voters who can be accounted for. Other counties saw similar, albeit smaller, excess vote totals. More than 300 military personnel who were sent their absentee ballots too late to return them have signed affidavits saying they intended to vote for Mr. Rossi. Some 1 out of 20 ballots in King County that officials felt were marked unclearly were "enhanced" with Wite-Out or pens so that some had their original markings obliterated.
Most disturbing is the revelation last week by King County officials that at least 348 unverified provisional ballots were fed directly into vote-counting machines. "Did it happen? Yes. Unfortunately, that's part of the process in King County," elections superintendent Bill Huennekens told the Seattle Times. "It's a very human process, and in some cases that did happen."

King County elections director Dean Logan, Mr. Huennekens' boss, also concedes the discrepancy between the number of ballots cast and the list of people who are recorded as voting. Even though the gap is 1,200 votes, he says, "that does not clearly indicate that the election would have turned out differently." Are voters supposed to trust an election merely because it can't "clearly" be shown to be hopelessly tainted? Mr. Logan is certainly singing a different tune now than he was on Nov. 18, when he responded to charges of voting irregularities in an e-mail to colleagues, which read in part: "Unfortunately, I have come to expect this kind of unsubstantiated crap. It's all too convenient, if not now fashionable, to stoop to this level when there is a close race."

Slade Gorton, a Republican former state attorney general and U.S. senator who is advising Mr. Rossi, says a court should order a revote rather than declare valid one of the two earlier vote counts that Mr. Rossi won. "No one can govern effectively under the cloud this race has created," Mr. Gorton says. He notes that state law doesn't require any showing of fraud to contest an election. "That is irrelevant to whether the election should be done over," he says. "The law is quite clear in giving a court the right to void any election where the number of illegal or mistaken votes exceeds the margin of victory, and it has done so in the past."

Gorton's point is a salient one, but I doubt a court opts to order a new election. It's such a drastic remedy that I can't see it being employed. But a new election probably should take place. In place of that, the King County elections officials should be exiled to some terrible place, like Canada.

Meanwhile, Sound Politics, a great blog that's been keeping track of the entire mess, has this post, linking to a press release by AFT Washington, the state teacher's union. Here's part of the text from the press release, and note the italicized word...

As you know, Christine Gregoire's gubanatorial election has already been certified by the Secretary of State. Tomorrow, the state legislature will also certify the election as fair and complete.

Then again, maybe it's not a spelling error. Maybe the Washington teachers are just teaching alternative spellings to their students to make things easier. Next up -- alternative math, to explain why the voting in King County was perfectly legit.