About that gubernatorial election....

Spokane Spokesman-Review reporter Jim Camden has a superb post up at his blog (Spin Control) about the efforts of local and state election officials to clean up the voter rolls using new technology:

Remember all the aspersions cast on Washington state's voters after the 2004 gubernatorial election? All the hand-wringing about people voting twice to stuff the ballot box and dead people and felons casting ballots?

What if we told you that potential voter fraud in the November election was, at most, a one in 2 million chance?

[...]

At most, we had one case of double voting out of 2,107,370 ballots cast. Which is a .00004 percent rate of possible fraud.

Secretary of State Sam Reed said he was "pleasantly surprised" with the results. The state is doing a better job of cleaning up its voter records, but added "we really don't have a history of voter fraud here."

Which will come as a huge shock to some of his Republican brethren, who still hope to run Dino Rossi in a gubernatorial grudge match against Chris Gregoire to win the seat that was "stolen" from him. It also might give pause to some of their pollsters, who seem to delight in reporting that people don't have confidence that the problems of the 2004 elections have been cleared up.

On the eve of the November election, one polling firm said its survey showed that 71 percent of the people lacked confidence there'd be no problems in 2006.

Of course, if people [ahem, Stefan & Co.] keep insisting there are problems, even if they don't provide any proof, some folks might just conclude those problems exist.

Exactly. (Emphasis is mine). The outcome of the 2004 gubernatorial election was resolved over a year and a half ago, but unfortunately the massive campaign of deceit orchestrated by state Republicans and Rossi operatives has not yet fully dissipated. Democrats need to do a better job of debunking and refuting the misinformation. Camden's post, though, is quality journalism at its finest - and what we expect from reporters in the traditional media.