Wrapping Up Day Seven
Day Seven of the Washington State gubernatorial election challenge has concluded. We are nearing the end of this long, two weeks in court. The trial resumes tomorrow morning at 9:00 AM.
David Goldstein of HorsesAss.org has become a regular on John Carlson's weekday KVI show, appearing along with local wingnut Stefan Sharkansky. He was on yet again today and we again have a clip from the show that you can listen to.
Major highlights today: Dean Logan's testimony took up most of the morning and we really didn't learn anything new. Logan's testimony was mostly a rehash of information we've already seen before.
However, there was one interesting account that took place during yesterday's testimony which is getting a lot of buzz from the media:
It's simply misfortune that a close election hit the county elections division at a bad time. Dean Logan has, we believe, been trying his hardest to improve transparency, accountability, and accuracy. We have full faith that he is completely qualified to serve as King County elections director.
Logan needs and deserves our confidence to move forward. Humans make mistakes, no matter what. Only the most insane Republican would claim that elections can be perfect. Perfection is simply unattainable. There will always be errors.
After Logan's testimony, expert witness Christopher Adolph was back up on the stand blasting holes in the GOP's "proportional deduction" or "proportional reduction" or "statistical analysis" methodology, or, as Democrats say, "speculative attribution." Is there another concept that you can frame in more ways than this one? Hard to think of one.
After Adolph, King County elections operations supervisor Linda Sanchez was the last witness to testify today.
Sanchez talked about the canvassing process of reconciling poll books and votes after elections. An important component of her testimony was an explanation of "crossover" voting, where a person from one precinct goes to a polling place on Election Day to cast a ballot, signs in on the poll book for their own precinct, but mistakenly takes or is given a ballot from a different precinct.
The result then leaves one precinct looking like it has more votes than voters and one with less votes than voters.
As usual, we have a full wrap up of what transpired today - and we're continuing to update our index of all Pacific Northwest Portal-affiliated blog posts about the trial.
David Goldstein of HorsesAss.org has become a regular on John Carlson's weekday KVI show, appearing along with local wingnut Stefan Sharkansky. He was on yet again today and we again have a clip from the show that you can listen to.
NWPT48
Major highlights today: Dean Logan's testimony took up most of the morning and we really didn't learn anything new. Logan's testimony was mostly a rehash of information we've already seen before.
However, there was one interesting account that took place during yesterday's testimony which is getting a lot of buzz from the media:
Bridges noted that in the course of the lawsuit, he has read thousands of pages of witness depositions detailing mistakes and blunders by King County elections workers.Of course, the Republicans are reading way too heavily into this exchange. The judge, just like all of us, should be concerned with improving King County elections. King County has the power to make it better, and should strive towards that goal.
"When I was in the Army, I think the expression was 'taking names and'-- for your benefit, I guess -- 'kicking tush,'" Bridges said. "Is there any sense of urgency in King County about fixing some of these problems?"
Logan replied that he avoids the term "fixing" when referred to elections work, but that for some time his department has been motivated to improve its performance.
It's simply misfortune that a close election hit the county elections division at a bad time. Dean Logan has, we believe, been trying his hardest to improve transparency, accountability, and accuracy. We have full faith that he is completely qualified to serve as King County elections director.
Logan needs and deserves our confidence to move forward. Humans make mistakes, no matter what. Only the most insane Republican would claim that elections can be perfect. Perfection is simply unattainable. There will always be errors.
After Logan's testimony, expert witness Christopher Adolph was back up on the stand blasting holes in the GOP's "proportional deduction" or "proportional reduction" or "statistical analysis" methodology, or, as Democrats say, "speculative attribution." Is there another concept that you can frame in more ways than this one? Hard to think of one.
After Adolph, King County elections operations supervisor Linda Sanchez was the last witness to testify today.
Sanchez talked about the canvassing process of reconciling poll books and votes after elections. An important component of her testimony was an explanation of "crossover" voting, where a person from one precinct goes to a polling place on Election Day to cast a ballot, signs in on the poll book for their own precinct, but mistakenly takes or is given a ballot from a different precinct.
The result then leaves one precinct looking like it has more votes than voters and one with less votes than voters.
As usual, we have a full wrap up of what transpired today - and we're continuing to update our index of all Pacific Northwest Portal-affiliated blog posts about the trial.
