The State of Washington’s charming image, a compound of mountain vistas, latté shops, Microsoft, mellow ex-hippies and excruciatingly pure, high-minded government, may suffer remaking as the gubernatorial vote count drags on. Today is the official deadline for counties to certify results, but the race between Republican Dino Rossi and Democrat Christine Gregoire (a favorite of the plaintiffs’ bar, whose unstinting support has pushed her forward despite a record of dubious legal competence) is so close that it puts on embarrassing display the slovenliness of the state’s election process and the negative consequences of voting by mail instead of at the polls.
The most attention-grabbing election incidents were the late appearance of some 10,000 “magical mystery ballots” in King County, rescuing candidate Gregoire from what had looked like inevitable, no-recount-needed defeat, and Democrats’ trolling for affidavits from “voters” whose provisional ballots didn’t bear their own signatures. The former may have been the result of incompetence rather than fraud. The latter is, at the very least, disturbing. As recounted by vote fraud expert John Fund (in the subscription-only OpinionJournal Political Diary, just $3.95/month, cheap):
How Many Votes Do I Need? Because I Got’em Here Somewhere
Republican Dino Rossi holds a 19 vote lead out of 2.8 million votes cast as Washington state begins its final day of vote counting to determine if Mr. Rossi or Democrat Christine Gregoire is the state’s new governor. But this race is clearly heading for a recount and possible litigation.
Yesterday, King County superior court judge Dean Lum refused to stop election officials in liberal King County (Seattle) from counting 400 provisional ballots that had been rejected because the signatures on them did not match signatures on the voter registration forms. Democratic Party workers were able to obtain a list of 929 rejected ballots and over the weekend gathered signed affidavits from 400 of those voters asking that their rejected ballots be counted.
Ryan Bianchi, communications assistant for the campaign of Ms. Gregoire, admitted their approach was blatantly partisan. A Democratic volunteer asked if the person who filled out the provisional ballot was a Gregoire voter: “If they say no, we just tell them to have a nice day,” he told the Seattle Times. If voters said yes, they are asked if they wanted to make their ballots valid. Only those ballots were turned into King County officials, who promptly announced they would count them. This makes Al Gore’s 2000 call for a selective counting of Florida counties look positively kosher.
State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance is outraged that King County would determine that ballots were legitimate based solely on signatures collected by Democrats. Democratic state chairman Paul Berendt responded: “Going to court to stop ballots from being counted is disgraceful.” Seattle Mayor Greg Nickles chimed in: “Let’s count every vote.”
Yes, but what about Washington State’s other counties, where two-thirds of the state’s people live? Many provisional ballots in counties won by Mr. Rossi were rejected but no one sent squads of partisans out to try to convert them into valid votes. Even Judge Lum expressed displeasure that he had been asked to “micromanage an election,” but he nonetheless allowed King County to count provisional ballots harvested by Democratic workers.
King County officials say they are applying the same standard of scrutiny given to absentee ballots that face rejection because of inconsistent signatures. King and other counties accept written oaths vouching for their veracity. But unlike absentee ballots, provisional ballots, which are given to voters if their names don’t appear on registration rolls, don’t have a presumption of validity. They must be set aside and investigated to make sure they are legitimate. For King County officials to reject such ballots because of mismatching signatures and then allow partisan operatives to selectively verify them represents a blatant attempt to put a fist on the scale in favor of one party. Sadly, it looks like this election will wind up in court.
The fact that the signature on a ballot envelope isn’t the same as a “voter’s” real one is good prima facie evidence that somebody else cast it. Maybe it was given away freely. Maybe it was bought, coerced or stolen. In any case, the non-voter shouldn’t be able to legitimize his own or another’s illegal action by ratifying it after the fact. If votes secured through bribery or intimidation count just like all others, why don’t we just put public offices up for sale on eBay?
The same comment applies to non-provisional absentee ballots with phony signatures and begins my tug at the skein of impropriety inherent in any election conducted primarily by mail.
In Washington State, there are no restrictions on absentee voting. This year about 70 percent of all votes were mailed in. Ballots cast by mail are not secret. An individual may choose to keep his own confidential, but he can also sell it, give it away or yield it to superior physical or moral force. I know personally of instances in which indifferent voters handed their ballots to family members or friends to fill out, and there surely were many sinister cases. If as few as one percent of the 2.8 million votes cast for governor were improper, the election, in which the winner will have a plurality of a few hundred at most, may well have been decided by patently illegal ballots. Should the governorship be bestowed on the contender whose supporters were most successful in securing the ability to vote more than once?
In the 19th Century, tremendous battles were waged to obtain the right to the secret ballot. In the 21st we have grown indifferent to it. If the Rossi-Gregoire squabble wakes us up, it will have been a useful election, no matter who winds up as the official winner. If, on the other hand, these abuses become the norm, democracy is doomed to degenerate into a clash of opposing fraudsters.
Update, 9:26 p.m. CST: With all counties having certified their results, Dino Rossi is the winner by 261 votes, at least until the mandatory recount is completed. The fact that my preferred candidate has (so far) won does not alter my opinions about the process by a single iota.
Fantastic as always. Keep it up!
Posted by: Morgan Smock | Thursday, November 18, 2004 at 08:56 PM