Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Uh oh: GOP's felon list may be way off

Oh, dear..the title of the blog says it all.

In the Seattle Times this morning, reporter David Postman tells us this in his opening paragraph: "The list of alleged felon voters compiled in Dino Rossi's legal challenge to the governor's election mistakenly includes people tried as juveniles who never lost their right to vote."

Whoops!

So perhaps hundreds of the 1,135 people on the Republicans' list are there improperly because of juvenile cases.

Whoops!

As Jenny Durkan, a lawyer for the Democratic Party in Dino Rossi's court case noted, "This is a huge error."

Yes...a an error of colossal proportions. This represents a huge part of the list! As the Attorney General's office notes:
Assistant Attorney General Jeff Even said yesterday that people tried as juveniles should not be on the list. People found guilty in the juvenile system are not technically convicted of a crime under state law. Rather, that is a civil procedure and would not disqualify someone from voting once they turned 18, he said.
This opinion is backed up by a Supreme Court ruling on the matter. The GOP and the Rossi campaign don't dispute the validity of the opinion. Neither have they apologized for making such a big mistake.

This latest news should come as no surprise. Since November, everything the Rossi campaign has said has been exaggerated in one way or another. They make phony claims, and then it turns out those claims were bogus.

After the Seattle Times started investigating the list, they found this information. Why didn't the Rossi campaign find it? Was it because they liked their inflated number? What other errors are on this list that we don't know about? This information needs to be scrutinized very heavily, because we know where it came from, and the source simply isn't reputable.

This latest phony information shows once again that the GOP could care less about accuracy or truth. This entire court case is a charade to get rid of legitimately elected Governor Christine Gregoire. Rossi and his friends are interesting in winning. That's all they're interested in.

Not truth, not justice, that's just what they would have you believe. They have no evidence of any fraud committed in the gubernatorial election - just endless allegations.

In fact, Republicans continue to attack King County elections chief Dean Logan as a crook! They attack him for problems with the 2004 election when their own list is full of gaping holes! What an embarrassment...and a double standard! The irony is simply amazing.

This list was put together carelessly and included people who never should have been on it in the first place. Again, such carelessness indicates this court case is merely a campaign to get rid of Governor Gregoire, not discover "the truth" about what happened in the gubernatorial election. We know what happened: we had a very close, but legitimate, election.

As for the GOP, they will continue to attack elections officials with allegation after allegation. Fortunately, you can't get away with allegations in court. You have to prove they're true. That may be very difficult for the GOP, since it continues to run into trouble with its "evidence".

Whoops!#NWPT2

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