Poor Excuses From King County on Election Mess

The new strategy for sweeping away the lingering mess that is the 2004 Washington State gubernatorial election is to convince the public that a dozen or more legislative acts can fix the system... for next time!

No need to correct the scandalous behavior that led to this disaster, we promise will have it mostly fixed in time for 2006, or maybe 2008.

Clearly it's a way to deflect attention away from the ReVote Washington movement, supported by a majority of state voters in a recent KING-5 survey, and toward a gradual conditioning of the public to accept an illegitimate governor named Christine Gregoire.

Don't trust their intentions for one minute.

(Seattle Times)
More than a dozen bills are in the works, including proposals that would require that absentee ballots be received by Election Day and measures that would move the primary election to an earlier date.

"Voters deserve to feel like we've paid attention to what happened and we're at least going to fix what we can fix," said House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam.

No amount of new legislation, however, can completely prevent problems from cropping up in an election like the one between Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi, election officials say. Gregoire won by 129 votes. The Republicans are contesting the election in court.

"It's important not to set up a false expectation," King County Elections Director Dean Logan said yesterday. "When you're dealing with a process that is so dependent on human interactions ... there is going to be a margin of human and administrative error."