Wednesday,
December 22 2004
IF IT WALKS LIKE A STOLEN ELECTION....: I'm just
back from a week-long vacation in the Seattle area and let
me tell you, what's going on out there in the Washington
state governor's race is an absolute mess and a travesty.
As
I'm sure everyone is aware, this morning the chairman of
the Washington State Democrats declared
that based on recount data he'd received from King County
election officials Christine Gregoire has overtaken Dino
Rossi by 8 votes:
"We're
confident Christine Gregoire has been elected the governor
of the state of Washington," Democratic Chairman
Paul Berendt said. "I believe Dino Rossi should concede."
Obviously,
this is just hardcore partisan hackery - which is to be
expected from the chairman of both parties - but the underlying
message is important and unmistakable: "we've finally
gotten the result we wanted so we can now stop everything
and officially declare the race over."
There
are a lot of moving parts to this story and, although the
details of these parts are important, the nut of the story
is this: over the course of the two recounts conducted during
the last seven weeks, the results from the largest, most
Democratic county in the state of Washington has effectively
switched the outcome of this race.
Republicans
have watched Rossi's statewide lead whittled down by the
machine recount in King County, by the "discovery"
of absentee ballots in King County weeks after the fact
that were apparently excluded from the first two counts
due to a clerical error, and most recently by watching King
County election officials working to determine "voter
intent" during the hand recount which looks to have
produced just enough votes to put Democrat Christine Gregoire
over the top. As a result, it's simply hard for Republicans
to conclude anything other than that the election is being
(or perhaps has been) stolen right before their eyes.
More
on this later...... - T. Bevan 11:55 am Link
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