[Vision2020] FW: seattletimes.com: Let's hope court's on voters' side

[Carl Westberg]

Does anyone really believe that, if the circumstances were reversed, the 
Republican party in our neighboring state would not have pulled out all the 
stops to ensure a valid count?  From this morning's Seattle Times.           
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                     Carl Westberg Jr.











>Let's hope court's on voters' side
>Full story: 
>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002127117_danny22.html
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>Seven weeks after Election Day, we have arrived at our Florida moment.
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>As precarious as the race for governor has been so far, today it could 
>truly veer off a cliff — potentially becoming a travesty that tops even the 
>2000 presidential fiasco in Florida.
>
>Our state Supreme Court will hear arguments  on whether King County can 
>count up to 735 ballots that were rejected seven weeks ago in a 
>bureaucratic screw-up.
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>What was so jolting about the 2000 presidential election is that it ended 
>when a court stepped in and declared: No, you cannot recount the votes. You 
>cannot try to get a better sense of who really won.
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>In a clearly partisan 5-to-4 ruling, the court decided the presidency. It 
>was a shocking low point in American democracy. The court said: Voters 
>don't have the final say, we do.
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>Today, in Olympia,  the legal details are different, the stakes smaller. 
>But the overarching principle is the same: Do we count all the legally cast 
>votes? Or is the will of the voters going to be obscured by judges?
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>Let's be clear about these 735 ballots, as all manner of partisan hacks 
>have cast aspersions on them. There is zero evidence they are fraudulent. 
>They were never "missing" and suddenly found by scheming elections 
>officials.
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>They are absentee ballots still in their original envelopes, still sealed, 
>with the voters' signatures on the outside.
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>All are either postmarked or dated Nov. 2 or earlier. Nobody has broken the 
>seals to look at the ballots inside (they might all be write-ins for Ron 
>Sims, for all we know).
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>They were rejected because county employees thought they did not have 
>signatures for those voters, but they failed to check the original paper 
>registration forms.
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>If the signatures match those of voters on valid registration forms, then 
>how could we not open the envelopes and count the votes?
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>Republicans argue that in a recount you can tally only those votes that 
>were counted the first time.
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>State law isn't clear on this point. In one section it says a recount is a 
>"retabulation." In another it says a county can revisit any votes to 
>correct "any error that it finds."
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>For as long as anyone can remember, counties finding legal, uncounted votes 
>during a recount have made the blindingly obvious choice to count them. Six 
>counties have done so just in the past few weeks.
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>A major advantage we have over Florida is our state elections chief, 
>Republican Sam Reed, cares more about voters than partisan politics. He 
>says if the court bars King County from counting its votes, then logically 
>these other counties must uncount hundreds of votes they have already 
>tallied.
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>That's retroactive disenfranchisement. Even Florida didn't try that.
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>So far our election has been marred only by mistakes. Officials across the 
>state have ignored the shrill, irresponsible claims from both parties, 
>instead serving their true masters: the voters.
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>The state Supreme Court ought to do the same. Or else we'll all be heading 
>down an election rabbit hole that goes deeper than Florida.
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>Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 
>206-464-2086 or dwestneat at seattletimes.com.
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