The Washington Follies Continue

The Washington Governor's race continues, seemingly without end. Oh, wait, it's over... not...

Three Washington counties just discovered 110 uncounted absentee ballots--including 93 from Seattle's King County--in a governor's race that occurred more than five months ago and was decided by only 129 votes. Officials in Seattle's King County admit they may find yet more ballots before a court hearing next month on whether a new election should be called. Last Friday, they reported finding a 111th ballot.

The infamous 2004 governor's race was finally decided seven weeks after the election, after King County officials found new unsecured ballots on nine separate occasions during two statewide recounts. After the new ballots were counted, Democrat Christine Gregoire won a 129-vote victory out of some three million ballots cast. Even as she was sworn in last January, King County election supervisor Dean Logan admitted it had been "a messy process."

He wasn't kidding. During the two recounts, Mr. Logan's office discovered 566 "erroneously rejected" absentee ballots, plus another 150 uncounted ones that turned up in a warehouse. Evidence surfaced that dead people had "exercised their right to vote"; documentation was presented that 900 felons in King County alone had illegally voted and that military ballots were sent out too late to be counted. A total of 700 provisional ballots had been fed into voting machines before officials had determined their validity. In the four previous November elections, King County workers had never mishandled more than nine provisional ballots in a single election.

Here's a suggestion -- try to figure out why the media refuses to discuss this story. Well, the media except for the guy at Sound Politics. Of course, as Brandon Loy observed (hat tip: Instapundit)...

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why a national popular-vote election of the president is a terrible idea. Up in the Evergreen State, there's a lawsuit scheduled for May, with the prospect of a new election in November if the judge sides with the Republicans. Imagine the governor trying to run her state under a cloud of illegitimacy and uncertainty like that. Now imagine a president in the same circumstances! He'd be veritably crippled in his ability to run the country.

The Electoral College system is imperfect, to be sure; there are steps that we could take to make it more representative. But its "safe harbor" deadline provides a built-in mechanism to end all Florida- and Washington-style lawsuits in mid-December, and the ease of counting 538 votes with perfect accuracy (as opposed to the impossibility of counting 100 million votes with perfect accuracy) virtually guarantees that we'll have a president by Jan. 20.

Most importantly, the Electoral College and the Congress have the final word. Once a president is picked and sworn in, no judge has the power to overturn the result and order a new election. That's as it should be -- as it must be.

Again, the electoral college proves the intelligence of our founders. They didn't screw this one up like everyone thinks.