Don’t let this be you

And kids remember, “Trick or Treat” is a verbal contract!

Technorati Tags: Comics, Cartoon, Surrounded, Doug Dobbins

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Well the first Seattle Mind Camp, is sold out. I guess since it was free, a better term might be full. Anyways here is a good Seattle Pi story about it.

Technorati Tags: Seattle Mind Camp, Andru Edwards

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I do my duty as an American citizen and try to help out the President with his Scooter “problem.”

See what happens when Laura wants to play with the old video camera and Truman won’t act for her. This video was shot earlier this week for Laura to have something to play with on the video editor. I am releasing it since people who saw it thought I should.

Technorati Tags: Whitehouse, Scooter Libby, Vespa, Video, Doug Dobbins, Bush, Iraq War

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Technorati Tags: Comics, Cartoon, Surrounded, Doug Dobbins

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Stefan Sharkansky may be going to court this week in order to get Ron Sims and King County Elections to release the documents which he has requested to see.

From what I can see Mr. Sharkansky wants to see the following:

• The transaction log for the voter registration database, which should show the how, by whom and when any changes were made to voter registration records.
• Several hundred provisional ballot envelopes which Mr. Sharkansky suspects will prove that there were even more unlawfully counted provisional ballots.
• 91 absentee ballot envelopes from voters according to Mr. Sharkansky the database records will say returned both an absentee and a provisional.

Per Mr. Sharkansky, he has been asking for these 91 absentee ballot envelopes for more than six months, but has never received either the envelopes or an explanation why they haven’t been produced. So he was asking for them during the time the GOP was getting ready for trial in Wenatchee.

I base the above on his blog post

Now I have gotten people who are upset about Mr. Sharkansky’s actions e-mailing me or calling me about his requests, to which I ask why?

Some question his motives about doing what he is doing. Even you subscribe to the point of view that Mr. Sharkansky is just being evil and wanting to cause problems, which I don’t, the system should be open enough that anyone who wants to review the records should be able to. I do think he is upset that his man, Dino Rossi, did not win. After all, this was an election where the margin of victory was less than the traditional margin of error. But I also found it odd that the Rossi and GOP teams did not point out the errors they said they saw election night until the recounts started to not go their way.

But at the same time, King County did have problems with their tabulation of the Nov. 2004 election. Here are some, not all, of the errors:

• Nearly 660 provisional ballots were counted without the required validation.
• Election workers mistakenly excluded 566 valid absentee ballots from both machine counts because they failed to check the voters’ signatures adequately. A state Supreme Court ruling led to inclusion of those ballots in the hand recount after the signatures were verified.
• Workers overlooked 20 absentee and two provisional ballots placed in the side compartments of voting machines. Officials included only the provisionals in the hand recount, because information on the ballot envelopes established they were cast on Election Day.

For those of you who are outside of Washington state here is a recap of the voting: Republican Dino Rossi won the Nov. 2 General Election by 261 votes and a machine recount by 42 votes. But he lost to Democrat Christine Gregoire by 129 votes in a hand recount — the third tally in the race. (She led by 10 votes as the Washington State Supreme Court’s unanimous decision allowed 735 King county ballots which were mistakenly disqualified to be reviewed by the King County canvassing board and counted if they were valid which gave the final total of 129 in the hand recount) But after spending millions of dollars, months on investigations and two weeks in trial, the net result for the Republicans was that Rossi lost four votes from his total, pushing Gregoire’s margin to 133. In August 2005 Washington State Republicans reported a $1.6 million debt to the Public Disclosure Commission and the Washington State Democrats reported $654,000. Together, the parties spent at least $6 million on vote recounts.

Now back to the present. Mr. Sharkansky has been showing photos of things he is finding questionable in his blog from the Nov. 2nd, 2004 election, many of which look like very fair questions to me and deserve answers.

Many in the Democratic party and on the left question the 2000 election in Florida, because unlike here in Washington state not every vote was counted and it was decieded by 9 judges in DC. Plus in Washington State the GOP had its day in court too, during which they failed to prove to Judge John Bridges their claims of fraud because they were not supported by evidence. Judge Bridges rebuffed their statistical proposal for subtracting invalid votes from the candidates, calling it scientifically inadequate. He also rejected their suggested interpretations of state laws and previous court rulings on election challenges. Bridges said the chief principle governing elections court cases is judicial restraint: “Unless an election is clearly invalid, when the people have spoken, their verdict should not be disturbed by the courts.” Only the Democrats showed who illegal voters voted for, which is why Dino Rossi lost 4 votes to raise Gregoire’s margin to 133.

So Mr. Sharkansky has gone to work to research the voting rolls looking for ineligible voters and for errors from the 2004 general election to see if the system has the safe guards now to keep those errors from happening again. Yes, he is dogging Sims about it, but as along as King County keeps the sun light from shinning on the voting system, he has every right to.

While I always want my candidate to win, I want and the voters need to have a voting system that works correctly and can be reviewed to the Nth degree by anyone regardless of their motives.

If Democrats in King County think Mr. Sharkansky is cherry picking examples to make his cause look better, those same Democrats should be reviewing the voter rolls and records from the 2004 election too. More eyes reviewing the system will only make it stronger in the end.

There is nothing more sacred to health of the American Republic than fair, open and accountable elections.

Mr. Logan, you need to the release documents Mr. Sharkansky has requested. If this is a case of sour grapes those records should help Mr. Logan prove it.

Technorati Tags: King County, Ron Sims, Washington State, Republicans, Democrats, Stefan Sharkansky, Election, Recount, Dino Rossi, Christine Gregoire, Dean Logan

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