(WA) 4/09 - KING - COUNTY TO PAY $225...

Author Message   Bev Harris Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 10478 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 2 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, May 1, 2009 - 12:07 pm:        King County records obtained years later in a public records lawsuit ended up with the county agreeing to pay a whopping penalty fine. The records reveal that King County officials unlawfully counted hundreds of ineligible ballots in the Rossi/Gregoire gubernatorial race and concealed this information well after the election and gubernatorial contest trial. And here's why the combination of ACORN (stuffing voter rolls with garbage registrations that have to be hand-weeded out by too-short deadlines) combined with massive mail-in voting procedures is toxic to election transparency. Voter lists filled with crud combined with mass mail-in votes make it impossible to "get it right on Election Night" and in the case of the 2004 Dino Rossi/Christine Gregoire race for governor, impossible to get things cleared up at all until years later. Then-King County elections official Dean Logan, now elections chief in massive 6-million-voter Los Angeles County (another mail-in voting powerhouse) was a named defendant in this lawsuit. Logan was the elections chief for nearly the entire time that the records were withheld, and he was a named defendant in Stefan Sharkansky's records lawsuit on Rossi results. Sharkansky's excellent Web site, SoundPolitics.com, provides conservative political commentary and has also delivered sound election integrity investigations from the much-needed conservative point of view. Most Americans just want fair transparent elections: People eligible to vote voting, ineligibles off the list, all votes counted accurately, and the right to know. Indeed, without this, we deviate from the form of government originally envisioned by the founders of this nation. Just a note: King County earned a whopper of a fine on another wrongful withholding of records related to a sports stadium. Washington citizen Armen Yousoufian pursued the county with lawsuits until he won; we provide an online interview of Yousoufian here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/9954/10071.html The kingpin of King County politics during these times was Ron Sims, recently appointed to H.U.D. in the Obama Administration. Seattle Times - April 25, 2009, by Gene Johnson http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2009119716_blogger25.html King County settles vote-records suit from 2004 governor race King County has agreed to pay conservative blogger Stefan Sharkansky $225,000 to settle a public records lawsuit he brought over the county's delay in releasing documents about the 2004 governor's election. Sharkansky filed his request in December 2004, seeking a list of everyone who voted in the county in the election that year, but the county didn't satisfy the request until more than two years later. County spokeswoman Carolyn Duncan said in an e-mail that information in the documents provided to Sharkansky would not have changed the outcome of the razor-thin race between Democrat Chris Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi. Gregoire won by 133 votes following two recounts and a trial in Chelan County Superior Court. Sharkansky, however, says the documents show that King County elections officials counted hundreds of ineligible ballots — including double votes and votes from unregistered or improperly registered voters. He says they could, indeed, have changed the outcome of the election. The documents were not produced during the trial, and therefore "the trial never explained this mystery of why there were more votes than voters," Sharkansky said Friday. "Additional documents that were released last month in discovery for my case confirmed that county officials both knew more about the illegal vote counting than they had previously acknowledged, and also knowingly withheld responsive documents from me during 2005 and 2006," he wrote on his blog, http://www.soundpolitics.com In a statement Friday, King County said officials had a hard time fulfilling Sharkansky's request because they were so busy dealing with the recounts and the court challenge. "Elections staff made every effort to provide Mr. Sharkansky with all of the documents he wished to review as soon as reasonably possible," the statement said. "... Nonetheless, Mr. Sharkansky sued King County in 2005 over the county's handling of his requests." Duncan declined to comment on Sharkansky's analysis that hundreds of ineligible votes were counted. In January, the state Supreme Court struck down a $124,000 penalty assessed to King County in another case. The justices said the amount was not enough to punish the county for refusing to give businessman Armen Yousoufian records involving economic studies of Qwest Field. Sharkansky wrote on his blog Friday that the size of the payment, which King County offered before trial, clearly reflected its culpability. The county's statement noted that it now has a full-time public-records specialist to handle requests. This article is also archived in the Washington - King County section of this Web site.   Laurie Sabel Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Pearl Post Number: 3 Registered: 2-2008 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 (A keeper?) Posted on Monday, May 4, 2009 - 12:31 pm:        This just punishes the taxpayers for the actions of unscrupulous civil servants. To curtail this, there needs to be a personal price to the offender - like the loss of their job!   Mark E. Smith Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Mymarkx Post Number: 385 Registered: 7-2005 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 2 (A keeper?) Posted on Monday, May 4, 2009 - 12:42 pm:        Precisely, Laurie. If voters can't directly impeach or remove local, state, and federal officials for malfeasance as soon as that malfeasance becomes known (without having to wait for their term of office to expire and another rigged election to be held), the officials cannot be considered to be public servants or representatives of the people. If you run a business, you have the power to hire and fire, therefore you have supreme control over your business. Without the ability to both hire and fire, the public does not have supreme power over government, which means that such a system is not a democracy. The textbook definition of democracy is a system in which supreme power over government is vested in the people. That's not what we have. Officials can do whatever they wish, and we are forced to pay their salaries, pay for whatever expenses they impose on us, and even pay their fines if they commit crimes against us. That is tyranny.

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