Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Washington State and Puerto Rico Not So Merry This Christmas
Once people know the number they need to reach to win a disputed election, the temptation to cheat seems overwhelming. Just ask residents of Washington State and Puerto Rico. The close governor's races in both places remain mired in dubious litigation with no final resolution seems likely before 2004 ends.
Washington State's King County "a Democratic stronghold, the biggest county in the state and the last to report results from the statewide hand recount that began Dec. 8" has magically found over 700 ballots uncounted:
During the hand recount, county workers found 573 ballots that elections officials say were mistakenly rejected because of a problem with how the voters' signatures had been scanned into the computer system. Workers then searched a warehouse and found 150 more overlooked ballots from voters with last names beginning with A, B and C.
(One can't help but remember Ballot Box 13 and its 202 "missing" votes that put Lyndon Johnson in the U.S. Senate in 1948.)
Meanwhile, the race for governor of Puerto Rico remains unsettled even after two appeals to the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals. Litigation over voter intent in Puerto Rico has continued since November 2, when the Statehood Party, having lost by a margin of 3,380 votes, disputed up to 28,000 ballots cast for the Commonwealth's candidate.
The solution to this problem offered by liberals is, you guessed it, yet another government agency: "The United States has no nonpartisan national elections commission to ensure fair and equal treatment of all voters." As if federal employees, a group as thoroughly Democrat as the staff of the Democratic National Committee, could be expected to do anything but make rules which benefit their side. Their idea of a "fair" ballot would read: "To vote for the Democratic ticket, circle the picture of the donkey."
The conservative solution is to accept that any election system run by human beings is likely to fall short of absolute perfection and that days of recounts and lawsuits are just as likely to lead to crowning a "winner" elected by fraud or legal legerdemain as they are a legitimate choice of the people.
|posted by Jim on 10:02 PM|
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