On August 20, Washington state finished counting the votes from the August 6 primary. In the Land Commissioner’s race, there were five Democrats and two Republicans running. The initial election night count showed that the two Republicans would be the only candidates in November. However, now the race between the second-highest Republican and the leading Democrat is separated by only 51 votes, with the Democrat in the lead. When the recount is finished, we will know whether a Democrat is on the ballot or not.
See the results here.
Sounds like Democrats cheating again.
I’m sure a Democrat will ultimately win this. But I would have loved to have seen to Republicans as the only choices in November. I wonder if there would have been a write-in campaign.
We all know what the recount will find. Democrats cheat and they control Washington with an iron fist. Such a disgrace that they continuously drag George Washington’s name through the mud when he didn’t want a political party system.
As Alaska ought, Washington State should recognize the associational rights of recognized parties to determine who may, or may not, run as candidates with their party’s labels.
https://electionlawblog.org/?p=145256
LINK TO SEATTLE TIMES STORY
No candidates. Winning party should pick officeholders.
Hey, Upthegrove is in the top three 😄
The candidates were actively encouraging voters whose ballots had been rejected for signature mismatches to cure their ballots. Washington sends out ballots to all registered voters. They might hope that the USPS won’t deliver a ballot to a voter who has moved, but carriers may be careless. Some may decide to vote the ballot of the former tenant. Or someone may decide to vote for Mom who keeps mumbling about Richard Nixon. But maybe signatures have changed.
The Upthegrove campaign said they had 350 volunteers contacting Democrat voters to encourage them to cure their ballot. Individual counties report details. King County sent out 1,421K ballots. 14K came back as undeliverable. 566K were returned (roughly 40% turnout). 6786 were challenged. 4778 of those were late. 1314 were rejected because of signature mismatch. 669 were unsigned.
559K were accepted. But there were 51 empty envelopes (i.e. the envelope was signed and deemed to match, but there was no ballot in the envelope).
If I have calculated right, there were 24,395 undervotes in the land commissioner race (4.4%). For the senate race 1.6% and the governors race 1.8%. That is a lot of ballots that were potentially miscounted.
A manual hand count is done by election precinct. King County has 2758 precincts. So they have to take 560,000 ballots and sort them out into 2758 piles, and then do a hand count for each precinct. Since all the ballots come into one site, they are fed into vote counting machines that keep separate totals by precinct.
There was an Oregon recount requested by someone who was seeking to verify the counting process rather than challenging a result. They got the machine recount. Then they asked for a hand recount of a few precincts. Since they had to manually separate the ballots, and were being charged the actual cost, they got an estimate of 11-seventy-thousands of $$$.
@Nuña,
There is an Updegrove running for a judgeship in Texas. The Democrats are claiming he is using his father’s name. His father Robert E. (Earl) Updegrove, was a judge until defeated in 2022. His son Robert Elwood “Wood” Updegrove, is running as Robert E. Updegrove, and using his father’s residential address, even though he allegedly lives in a different county with his wife and kids. He is recycling his father’s campaign signs, changing a “1” to a “3” since he is running for a different court number.
Those op den Graff’s are tricky people always changing their name.
@WZ,
Washington sends a voters pamphlet to every household. There is also an online version which has links to the candidate website. The websites typically have a section for endorsements. This is better than the government attempting to organize political association for voters.
Jim and WZ, howsabout no party labels on ballots at all? And no jungle primaries(maybe even no primaries).
@CP,
In Washington, the Superintendent of Public Instruction does not have partisan labels, and a candidate can be elected in the first election. The candidate’s websites include endorsements. Some see to stress individual endorsement (e.g. some voters might put more weight in an endorsement from Chris Powell rather than the “Libertarian Party”)
In early US elections for Congress and legislatures some states, particularly in New England, required majority election. Each attempt, or try, to elect someone was referred to as a trial. So there might be a first trial, second trial, etc. Primary is an adjective meaning first (e.g. primary stage, primary school, primary care, primary election). In New England sometimes no candidate could gain a majority. Eventually, one might give way, or a new candidate might be put forward.
If there were printed ballots, a candidate with 1% support might qualify for the next trial. But new candidates and repeat candidates could qualify with a filing fee/petition.
“But there were 51 empty envelopes (i.e. the envelope was signed and deemed to match, but there was no ballot in the envelope).”
0.0036% of ballots sent and 0.009% of envelopes received missing their ballots, isn’t a lot. But that’s still an interesting “mistake”, because it is a lot easier, yet also more drastic to “lose” a few ballots entirely, than to “miscount” one or two races on a few ballot.
“Those op den Graff’s are tricky people always changing their name.”
Indeed, very tricky. Genealogists and etymologians hate them 😛
How’s about no ballots or candidates? Standing count,Vote by party.
@Nuña,
I really wasn’t highlighting the empty envelopes.
In Washington, Undervotes, Overvotes, and Write-ins are considered possible miscounts by machine:
Undervote: Voter missed target or didn’t make firm enough mark.
Overvote: Stray mark detected as vote.
Write-in: May have been vote for on-ballot candidate (in some cases these might be detected as overvotes: [x] Biden; [x] Write-in “Biden”
Until they have the possibility of changing a result, Write-in votes are untallied.
Each county daily posts a list of ballots received including status of Accepted or Rejected (Too Late, Unsigned, and Signature Does Not Match). It shows when and where the ballot was deposited. King County has a csv file with 566,009 lines. 4778 were too late. 669 were unsigned, 1314 had signature mismatches. The unsigned and signature mismatches could have been cured through the certification date of August 22 (the election was August 6). It is unknown (to me) how many were cured before the final report.
Those that were unsigned and had signature mismatches might have been fraudulent – and the miscreant did not want to be caught out attempting to cure them (e.g. if you had deposited a “signed” ballot envelope for a former tenant, you probably don’t have the matching ID). Perhaps some deposited an unsigned ballot envelope for a relative who was visiting the Donbass. If they returned in time, they could cure the ballot. But this is a fraudulent ballot even if they wanted you to vote for them.
But there were likely some careless mistakes such as not signing the ballot envelope, and some where the signature had changed over time. 1314 is a lot of people trying to fake the signature for someone else. Officially this might mean “I can’t tell for sure”, but unofficially it could mean, “this doesn’t look anything like their old signature, I smell a rat.”
On the other hand, some fraudulent signature may have got through. If you had an example of the signature, it might be possible to get close enough. Election officials don’t want to go out of their way to reject 10s of 1000s of ballots.
560,000 sheets of paper is a lot to track, and remember that 1.4 million ballots were sent out. You get a mail sack from a post office or drop box (it is unlikely that zero ballots were lost at this stage). You then run them through vote counting machines, perhaps perfecting some that had damaged, covered with food, completed in the wrong color of ink, etc. Then putting them in some closed container that is sealed with a list of its contents, then placed in a locked storage room.
For the recount, the ballots have to be taken out of the storage, sorted by precinct (I don’t know whether they have sorting machines, but King County has 2500 election precincts, and thus needs that many bins.
King County had 4 Upthegrove, 3 Updegrove, 2 Updegraf, and 1 Uptegrove voters.
Democrats don’t have to cheat, we’re popular!