What Matters in Washington State

I haven't done a lot of blogging about the Washington State Governor's race and how the Democrats have quite obviously managed to steal the election. If you're interested in the subject and you haven't been checking in regularly with SoundPolitics.com, do so now.

The question on so many minds is what happens next. If you've been led to think that it's all over by the way the Democrats are talking, think again. Timothy Goddard at "The Flag of the World" writes that broadly speaking, "the only thing that matters is the Washington State Supreme Court decision that will be made after the Chelan court decision is appealed." In this excellent post yesterday, he explains what matters, what doesn't matter, and what might matter as the controversy proceeds forward.

For example:

WHAT MATTERS:

50,000 ballots enhanced illegally: This matters immensely. These King County ballots were not read correctly by the vote tabulating machines, and so were taken out and “enhanced” so that the machine could read them. This is perfectly legal–sort of. The election workers are supposed to duplicate the ballots, not use wite-out on them, and the election workers enhanced them to the point that it was impossible to review those ballots, which was supposed to be done. This is in violation of state law. Even if only 1% of those ballots had been determined to be invalid, that may have be enough to throw the election back to Rossi. This is an irregularity (or misconduct) that is certainly material to the result.

WHAT DOESN'T MATTER:

Gregoire’s inauguration: This doesn’t matter a whit, according to the law. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

WHAT MIGHT MATTER:

Military Ballots: My first inclination was to include this as a systemic problem that doesn’t pertain to the case at hand, but looking at the law as written–and the new allegations that King County lied about when they sent out the military absentees–it may rise to the level of “board misconduct.” Even if they didn’t lie, their undeniable foot-dragging could be argued to be misconduct. It’s probably the weakest link in the chain–but like dead voters, it’s something that people can easily relate to. It’s also one of the most reprehensible parts of this whole fiasco.

Lots more thoughts on what matters and what doesn't at The Flag of the World.

Also, today he has another post on what will likely be the Democratic Party's possible arguments against Rossi's contesting of this election.