Dino Rossi, the Republican candidate for Governor in Washington, sent a letter to his opponent, Christine Gregoire, urging her to join him in calling for a re-vote.
“The uncertainty surrounding this election process isn’t just bad for you and me — it is bad for the entire state. People need to know for sure that the next governor actually won the election,” Rossi said Wednesday evening, reading from a letter he sent to Gregoire.
“A revote would be the best solution for the people of our state, and would give us a legitimate governorship,” the letter added.
It’s not that his suggestion doesn’t have some merit. Essentially this election has no winner, no matter how many times we recount it there is no way to be confident in who won. The problem is, this is a complete flip-flop from his earlier call for Christine Gregoire to concede despite his own razor thin margin in the initial count and mandatory machine recount. It’s also a complete flip-flop from his previous position that his opponent should concede because a long election process was bad for the people of the state.
Suffice it to say, Rossi’s previous comments sound about as genuine as JLo’s marriage vows. He wasn’t interested in what was best for the people, he was interested in winning. Where are those great moral values now?
I should also point out that the state Republican Party opposed an effort by the Democratic party to have the improperly disqualified ballots in King County counted. Now that the counting of those (and improperly disqaulified ballots, misplaced, etc in other counties) resulted in a “win” for Gregoire, Republicans are considering legal action and have been requesting that other counties go back, in violation of the law since their results have been certified, and reconsider more ballots.
In contrast, Democrat Christine Gregoire’s position has been consistent throughout. Counties should make every effort to count all valid ballots. A hand recount should not have been done if it was not going to be done in all counties. And before the hand recount even began, before those notorious King County ballots were even “discovered,” she said she would not challenge the results if Rossi won the hand recount.
I challange anyone to come up with a reasoned defense of Rossi’s actions throughout this whole election process. I must say that I am glad I finally chose to vote for Gregoire. Rossi almost pulled the wool over my eyes, almost convinced me he wasn’t the kind of politician who would say one thing and do another for nothing better than his own ambition.
On the other hand, I am proud of my vote for Sam Reed, Republican Secretary of State in Washington. He has proven that there is hope for the Republican party, that there are members of the GOP who do believe in fair play and values and following the law.
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Categories: Election 2004
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December 30th, 2004 at 4:52:35 am
Hear hear — ESPECIALLY re WA SOS Sam Reed.
I am proud to say that among the 8 CT SsOTS for whom I worked (7 Dems, 1 Repub) were several (including the 1 R) who went Against their own party on certain elections-administration matters where their Party was just plain Wrong. One of them (a D) went against not only the party’s partisan interest, but HER OWN as a probable Candidate in an upcoming Special Election for higher office. (Well, yeah, it took some Persuading. :) But in the end she Did The Right Thing. :) / And she Won anyway. Just like I Told her she would. :)
Granted, none of these CT issues carried such high stakes as what Secretary Reed has had to deal with. But still. Political pressure is political pressure. Even on seemingly Lowly & Local matters — sometimes especially on those — it can be Fierce. Trust Me On This. :> {And while not all were vouchsafed an opportunity to be a Profile in Courage, none of the Secretaries I worked for, so far as I know, ever made a legally-incorrect Elections decision for partisan reasons.)
I really do believe that contrary to all the current NYTimes-type Hue & Cry against “partisan” elected state Chief Election Officials, most (I won’t claim All) do the Technical part of their jobs the way they’re supposed to: nonpartisanly. If you want to be cynical about it, look at it this way: paradoxically, there’s a self-regulating Political mechanism involved here. They want to be re-elected — and/or move on to Higher elective office. And if they don’t know it at first, they soon enough figure this out: If they try to illegally Rig the system for their Party’s, and/or their Own, benefit they are going to get Caught [easily!] and be politically Ruined for the future, by having Betrayed the Public Trust.
Now as for Dino Rossi, he is simply full of Crap. Entirely apart from the facts that (a) there is no WA State statutory or constitutional basis for a close-vote “Revote”, (b) we do not Make Up such election procedures as we Go Along, and (c) there is no particular reason to assume that a “Revote” would necessarily produce a more satisfactorily-decisive Result either way: another, ad-hoc, “election” would set a Terrible precedent. Any time it’s kind of Close, the Loser will demand a Do-over.
When the established procedures have been exhausted & you lose: you Lose. Them’s the Breaks. / (As Monica should have said: Close; but no Cigar. :)
December 30th, 2004 at 7:56:09 am
Okay, as your blog’s evil Neocon, you would expect me to support Rossi in his effort.
I am not.
You lost Rossi, move on.
December 30th, 2004 at 3:56:57 pm
In his letter to Gregoire, Rossi writes:
The thing is, Rossi has the power to wield great influence on how people view the outcome of this election. If he were to gracefully concede, saying the election was tight, hard fought, but in the end, fairly won, he could mitigate much of the damage his own party has caused through their own negative rhetoric.
He continues:
This is exactly the problem. Rossi continues to equate this to a best-of-three type election, where he won twice and Gregoire won once. That isn’t how it works. Gregoire won the final tally, the only one that matters in determining the outcome. This is vintage Republican poli-speak, the type they successfully used all throughout the presidential campaign.
He adds:
Misleading again. The election boards followed the rules. At no time did the Republican Secretary of State, Sam Reed, take the election boards to task for not doing so. When Democrats tried to expand the vote counting, against the rules, they were shot down by the courts. When Republicans tried to block the King County elections board from counting valid votes, a count that Reed approved, the courts sided with the Secretary of State.
Not true - we know that Gregoire won the election. The process was followed to more accurately count the votes. I point you to Danny Westneat’s article of his observations. If people think wrongly, then it is important for people close to the process to educate them on why the manual recount was more accurate.
The fact is Rossi’s offer is nothing but politicking. He throws out a seeming peace offering with the backdrop of a threat of him contesting the election and dragging the state through the courts for the next few months. His advisors believe that by doing so, enough people will be sympathetic to his case and paint Gregoire as a villain should she decline.
Normally I would favor a run-off election. I have always felt that should no candidate receive 50% of the vote or better, there should be a run-off election the following week between the top two vote getters. This is a system used successfully many places, including for national elections. If it can been done elsewhere, then surely this country can figure out how to do it. The end result will be a candidate with a majority vote, and significant clout for minor party candidates who do not have enough votes to qualify for the run-off, but enough supporters to have a great influence on the outcome.
In this election Libertarian, Ruth Bennett, received over 63000 votes. She could try to lobby that her primary platform concerns be given serious consideration by the candidate she chooses to ask her supporters to vote for. Her voters could tip the balance one way or the other, and it is only natural that a run-off candidate looking for those votes give strong consideration to the issues those voters care about.
However, a run-off election scenario must be in place before an election. You cannot change the process after the election. Rossi said this election was “a mess”. If so, then we should find ways to fix the process before going through another election that could also be a mess. Hopefully considering run-off elections will be one of the solutions on the table, but having a run-off now could be like jumping into the flames all over again.
December 30th, 2004 at 7:39:07 pm
(Comment as posted to Daniel’s interesting site, where his comment here appears, in somewhat-expanded form, as a Post. Mine, as below, hasn’t shown up on his yet, maybe I screwed it up - but here ’tis, anyway.)
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Very well thought out and set forth.
A few points:
(1) Rossi to the contrary notwithstanding, by all objective accounts the election was NOT “a mess”. I’m a career state Elections Officer (Connecticut), recently retired after some 30 years’ service. In my opinion the reported incidence, extent and numerical magnitude of offical error in the WA Nov. 2 election & first official tally were very low — unusually so. (We do a darn good job here in CT but WA apparently does better — and I don’t say that easily. :) The 2 recounts, naturally, were incrementally even more accurate, which is what close-vote recounts are For. The cynical and tendentious “mess” theory is sustainable only in reference to the standard of Perfection, which is (and shall always remain, irrespective of any & all Technology and Reform) no more Attainable in elections administration than in any other human endeavor.
(2) A 50%-plus-one requirement, leading to a Runoff if nobody meets it, does not eliminate the (perceived) problem of the Squeaky Close Vote. These are 2 different, albeit sometimes related, issues. (a) If one candidate — or, theoretically, 2 — is/are hovering fractionally right around the 50% mark, then the Recounts and Lawsuits abound, to determine whether there’s to be a Runoff or not. (b) If nobody’s near the 50% but it’s very close between votegetters #2 and #3 — or even among numbers 1, 2, AND 3 — then the “mess” arises in deciding Which Two are In the Runoff. (c) And speaking of IN the runoff: its results can be Squeakyclose, too (just as a Gregoire/Rossi ad hoc “revote” might very well be), and then it’s back to the Recounts and the Courts — again.
(3) Even while they were busy casting a statistical tie vote for Governor, on Nov. 2 2004 the Multi-tasking people of Washington state also adopted by a landslide the proposed Initiative Measure 872, which (if it survives the inevitable court challenge) will guarantee that the Winner receives an absolute Majority of the vote — by restricting the November ballot to the top two vote-getters, regardless their of their Parties OR Party singular, at the All-parties-and-independents “Primary”. IOW, the November election becomes the Runoff — the Automatic runoff, regardless of Primary percentages — between Primary finishers #1 and #2 even if they are of the same party. (Which, Yes, they CAN be. Read the official explanation. Be patient with the Background stuff; it’s necessary to understanding the new thing.) Thus, a Majority mandate is assured, at the expense of minor parties — and sometimes even a Major party — who will never make it to November. Lovely, ain’t it? Now the Moral or this Story is: Be careful what you Ask for…
- Joe Loy
December 30th, 2004 at 7:54:09 pm
Joe,
Thanks for your comments. I believe your comments on my blog were held up by a “technical” difficulty that I have now corrected.
I concur with your first point. People have become so quick to judge everything about this election and turn it into partisan fodder. The discussions at http://www.soundpolitics.com/ have been great examples of that.
Thank you for pointing out the issues around run-offs and the fact that there are always possibilities for close results that complicate things. Still I think the benefits outweigh the negatives.
As for the new system in WA, I voted against the initiative because I don’t like the idea of the primaries being turned into “round 1″ of the general election. The initiative also tends to eliminate the benefits a run-off system would have for minor party candidates. So, as far as this voter is concerned, it wasn’t what I asked for.
December 30th, 2004 at 9:48:59 pm
Actually if I remember correctly Rossi did not get certified twice, he only got certified once. Since the first count was so close the automatic recount kicked in and he wasn’t certified until AFTER that process.