In yesterdays item on Election 2004, we reported on the 10 vote lead by Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire after a hand recount of all ballots in the state of Washington.
With the remaining 700 previously uncounted absentee ballots from Kings County now added to the final results, AP has declared Gregoire the official winner by a convincing 130 vote margin.
The BRAD BLOG originally learned of this news via the Fox News crawl, so we must assume the final count is accurate.
While we are again reminded of the value of being able to count the actual votes of American citizens by hand in close elections when necessary, there are, unfortunately, according to the AP report, some sore losers in the Republican Party who can’t seem to let go of the official results and move on.
Several GOP conspiracy theorists and extremist Rightwing bloggers continuing to desperately challenge the election results.
They are charging fraud in the election, along with changing rules and manufactured votes. As well, these extremist from the far rightwing of the Republican party may be preparing to contest the results further due to violations of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
After several Republican trial lawyers have clogged the courts during the manual recount by filing frivilous lawsuits throughout the process — only to have such embarrassing challenges roundly rejected by conservative and strictly constitutionalist rulings in several Washington courts, including their Supreme Court — we can only hope that these extremist whackos will soon be able to set aside their divisive partisan agendas, remove their tinfoil hats once and for all, realize that their candidate got beaten fair and square and quickly get over it for the good of the state.
For some reason, however, we have a feeling they’ll have trouble facing the fact that their team lost and that the people of Washington have clearly spoken by giving a broad statewide mandate to the Democrats. The voters there have issued a clear rejection to failed Republican policies along with their ill-conceived agenda.
The BRAD BLOG wishes to congratulate Governor-Elect Gregoire on her triumphant victory of good over evil in the Evergreen State!
What wonderful news. I’m as happy as Ebenezer Scrooge, when he wakes up to find that it’s still Chrismas morning.
Running the risk of being political incorrect, I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. (or Seasons’s Greetings if you prefer).
God Bless Us, Every One.
You don’t have to be a weather man to know which way the wind blows.
"AP: Democrat Gregoire Wins WA Governor Race by 130
Republican Conspiracy Theorists Cry Fowl
Sore Losers Can’t Seem to Get Over It, Move On"
HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HA,HURRAY,HURRAY, LAUGHING OUT LOUD!!!!!!!!! THIS IS GREEEAAAT!!! THE TABLES HAVE TURNED AND NOW THEY ARE THE SORE LOSERS, AND CONSPIRACY THEORISTS. I AM SOOOOOO EXCITED. THIS IS SUCH GOOD NEWS. MAYBE THIS WILL SET A PRECEDENT FOR THE COURTS IN OHIO. HURRAY!!!!! HAVE A GREEEAAAAT NIGHT EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!
😎
I guess it must be extremely frustrating to use every connivance to steal an election and still lose.
The language you used to describe the Republican reactions, Brad, was the ultimate gotcha! The consummate put-down. "Sore loser!" "Move on!" Gee, where have we heard those comments? Doh!
Having lived for the past four years in the Land of the Chad, Fort Lauderdale, this news really does my old heart good. Too bad Florida’s election laws are the pits, because if we had decent laws in this state Betty Castor would be our next Senator instead of that rogue, Bush-insider Martinez.
Are the Republican Conspiracy Theorists really crying "FOWL" and not "FOUL"? Well I suppose some of them must be; they don’t spell very well, do they? I think most of them are severely "CHALLANGED".
But I can understand why they are so upset. This is the sort of electioral process that will NEVER be acceptable to the freeper mentaility. I mean, how can a right winger accept the results of an election where ALL the votes were actually COUNTED? No wonder they don’t like it. They have been trying to do away with stuff like this for a long time.
No irony here, just move along now.
Nice to see you laying it on THIN, Brad. 😉
Histerical parody! Keep up the good work Brad.
Thanks for your news on Ohio and for checking your facts with integrity!
And Gregoire’s win is wonderful! But I’m dismayed and disgusted that bradblog has used exaggeration and insulting language to gloat just as the Republicans did after Nov 2. 130 votes is a "convincing margin", but it is hardly a "broad statewide mandate". And "Extremist whackos"? "tinfoil hats"? "triumphant victory of good over evil"?? How can this country ever heal if both sides hurl insults like children on a schoolyard??
A true mandate! However will she spend all that political capital? 🙂
Too funny! Thanks for the laugh…
Anybody else would say the election was stolen.
Of course, liberals would NEVER steal an election with fraudulent votes, riiiigggghhhttt????
Anybody else? That’s narrow thinking, Jim. You’re still bitter at the legal process that followed state and federal law, illustrating the way it is supposed to be done.
Dino Rossi is also bitter, apparently. I see no ability in some of our leaders to be gracious and magnanimous, whether in victory or defeat.
1. Rossi took the original vote by 261. This percentage of victory fell under the law of a mandatory machine recount.
2. After the machine recount, Rossi’s lead was reduced to 42. This percentage allowed a hand recount, by law.
3. The hand recount was requested and the money raised. The hand recount gave the lead to Gregoire by 10 votes, without including the ballots in question.
4. There were 573 ballots rejected initially by error of election officials, both Republican and Democrat members admitting to this mistake.
5. There were 150 ballots found that were never counted.
6. The Supreme Court was asked to determine what should be done with these ballots. The Supreme Court unanimously voted to uphold state and federal law, allowing these ballots to be counted.
7. End result, Gregoire gains 120 additional votes, finishing all due process concernig the methods we employ as a democracy to ensure that our right to vote as citizens is protected.
8. Representatives from both sides observed the entire process. Legal action has one more week to breathe, when it will be officially pronounced at an end when Secretary of State Sam Reed (R) – who got my vote in the election, by the way – to certify the election and name Christine Gregoire as the Governor of Washington State.
9. Democracy is on life support right now in the United States of America and I am glad that J. Kenneth Blackwell has nothing to do with Washington State. Poor Ohio. Harsh Winter Storm and Blackwell?
Have a Merry Christmas.
I’m so happy that Gregorie stuck it out and asked for the hand-recount. What the recounts tell us is that the machines cannot accurately count our votes and they should all be counted by hand all throughout this country. That would mean that our choices have to put down on paper! We have to get away from this notion that we have to know the second a polling place closes who won – it is only through thorough inspection of the votes do we know and that takes time. I think that is why Ohio Repub’s are afraid of a hand recount there – the truth will come out. We have to put pressure on our congressmen to force this issue of paper backups and more importantly to get rid of the touch screen machines all together. There has to be a better system.
Lets see now: every time we recount the ballots, the Republican loses a few more votes.
Does anybody see a TREND here?
Votes were fraudulently altered & counted, including counting as democratic "votes" ballots in which the opti scan marking was simply checked instead of the voting bubble being filled in alongside the name as required. Is this the end of the story? No, not at all. Money is pooring in to the Washington fight to out the cheaters.
Does anybody seriously think that King County did not fabricate votes for the democrat? Good grief.
Just a quick question for Clint Curtis: With his Florida prototype cheat progam that is activated by touching the screen in a corner and deactivated by touching the screen in another corner: what if a voter accidently put his hand on the screen and activated/deactivated it? HMMMM, I guess if this was a REAL programming plot, somebody would have thought of that, RIGHT CLINTON??????
Good grief, at least conspiracies have to be BELIEVABLE!
Like "King County fabricating votes for the democrat"? When every ballot was monitored throughout the entire process by a team of both Republican and Democrat witnesses?
Come on, Attorney Jim…take off that tinfoil hat, you sore loser, at least your conspiracy theory in King County has to be BELIEVABLE!
You can do better than that.
Republicans have seized power in most of the country and the federal government. Yet they want it all. They’ve always wanted it all…wealth, natural resources, power. Their entire history, from Bloody Abe to Blue Blood(y) Bush, has been about helping out their rich buddies get richer on the backs of the poor, working classes, native Americans. Bush & Company, and I mean "company", underscores their favorite slogan, "The business of America is business". Not all the people, of course, or their environment, just what’s best for "business".
Don’t understand Republicans? Understand that the Civil War was not about freeing slaves, it was about Northern industrialists who created the Republican Party needing to counteract the power of agrarian interests and the need to eliminate the competition between their cheap immigrant labor and the South’s free slave labor in the great western land rush. Ah! So what was all that fuss over Kansas and Missouri? Read the real American history folks!
So what did the great western land rush mean? Well, gold mines and cattle ranches and wheat farms and let’s not forget railroads. Republicans who then as now were the bought and paid for whores of monied interests, needed a military industrial complex to take out what was in their benefactors way…American Indians! Gee…let’s kill off an entire species, the Great Bison, and starve the bastards. (Today…it’s rain forests, or federal lands, or owls that get in their way) Other than Custer(d), the military prevailed, using ex-black slaves to enslave on reservations another people, the red man.
From there it was elementary, exploitation of the poor, the environment, and politics to insure the "Great Nation" we have today, the most corrupt, most powerful, and most environmentally destructive country on Earth. Children in coal mines and sweat shops, no health care, insurance, or coverage when you’re sick. Back then it was business that was the business of America and if you got ill, well tough luck…you’re fired!
Then those pesky poor and exploited started getting organized, creating unions, and starting to win elections. Damn! There goes the neighborhood! As the Republican blue bloods, including the Bush family, watched in horror as Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews…yikes…even blacks and hispanics…began moving on up the food chain to a better life made by those poll cheating Democrats. You know, about the time our dear leader’s grandfather was helping bankroll the rise of the Third Reich.
Republicans lamented over the poor slobs…they actually got better at voting fraud then Republicans did. Ok…time for Republicans to take back America for their business partners. Start moving America’s manufacturing base overseas, break up the power of unions, take over talk radio and bring GOD to cable TV. Then Republicans can really take over by building all the new electronic voting machines in America, bring corporate control to the press, and get their diamond dealing, money raking, no sex except for "us" televangelists to do the rest.
PRAISE THE LORD! THANK YOU FOR DELIVERING US OUR PRESIDENT! THANK YOU FOR OUR JERRY FALWELL AND PAT ROBERTSON AND OUR RUSH LIMBAUGH AND SEAN HANITY! THANK YOU FOR LETTING US DEFEAT THOSE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS AND ALLOWING US TO KILL 100,000 OF THOSE FILTHY UNCHRISTIAN MUSLIMS AND TAKE WHAT’S GOD GIVIN TO US…THEIR OIL!
Yes sireeeeee! Welcome to the land of the free rich and chickenhawk brave. Yes Republicans and Democrats steal elections, engage in propaganda, and exploit fears. The only difference is, to the wealthy oil and gas interests, military industrial complex, and their religious zealots who help conceal their agenda, it’s all big business and their laughing all the way to their Federal Reserve Banks.
Congratulations to whoever is the real winner in Washington! Unfortunately, because Republicans have found it in their best business interests not to have paper verifiable, dual paper and electronic match counting tabulation systems, and failsafe voting processes and procedures they have no basis for complaining about the one 2004 election that they didn’t get away with.
We could have a nationwide fair and honest voting system installed in every precinct by 2008, maybe even 2006 if they got off their soft packs. But then again, the powers running America have no real interest in anything fair and honest that they cannot exploit in their favor! So the choice to me is clear. Either they give us fair and honest voting or they get tarred and feathered in the greatest civil disobedience coup in world history. I think I’ll give them a few weeks. Have to get passed the holiday stuff and over the bridge to grandma’s house. HAPPY HOLIDAYS ALL!
I’m in the only Washington county that used McVoting Machines… the smart people voted absentee (my kucinich kids)… I suspect there will be cries for a revote. With Corporate Commercial Media (CCM) as their personal ad agency, they’ll probably have their way (whiny babies).
Failing a revote then it will be a reCALL…. who knows? They certainly have the MONEY, eh?
Funny stuff Brad sir… I think John Stewart saved my life last year… gawud we need comic relief to face these horrors.
What’s up with Attorney Jim. Is he, like, a sore loser or what?????
And I am all for a civil disobedience coup!!!! Able, willing and ready!!!!!! A little tar and feathering sound like a great way to vent some frustration.
Have a Happy Holiday!!!!!
If 700 additional ballots were tabulated and the final victory is only by an additional 100 votes, that does not sound like such a "Democratic stronghold" to me.
A brilliant bit of satirical writing. Quite ironic, considering the volume of right-wing voter fraud we’re being forced to deal with. What happened in Washington? How did the right-wing underground fail so miserably in fixing that close election?
All of you guys are kooks!
LOL. Very analytical of you Paul!
Kooks, nuts, atheists, conspiracy theorists, and whatever other label or slogan right-wing Christians and Republicans can use to discredit personally instead of substantively. I won’t call you right-winger’s kooks, but ignorant, naive, brainwashed, uninformed, and closed-minded may be a start.
In my opinion, anyone who can ignore all the evidence that has been piling up [since early October!], and still maintain that the ‘election’ was fair-and-square, is a heck of a lot kookier than the people who say "Hey! wait a minute! Something smells fishy here!"