The illegal felon vote in Washington

Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire won more votes from urbanites in the 2004 election while Dino Rossi, her Republican opponent, got more rural votes. Gregoire had probably more women's votes and Rossi more from men.

OK, but which candidate captured the hearts of the convicted felons who broke the law by voting?

Republicans said in court papers yesterday that at least 1,108 felons voted illegally, as did at least 55 other voters -- a total more than eight times as large as Gregoire's 129-vote margin of victory over Rossi in a hand recount.

But Democratic Party lawyers argue that for the Republicans to win their lawsuit to overturn Gregoire's election, they must prove that those voters substantially favored the Democratic governor -- which might require dragging individual felons into court to say for whom they voted.

That's ridiculous, replied Mary Lane, Rossi's spokeswoman. "Are they seriously talking about bringing in a bunch of criminals and putting them on the stand? I mean, that's absurd. They're criminals!"

...

Lawyers for the two political parties disagree about what that requires.

Lane said the Republicans, despite Bridges' comments, still contend that the number of illegal votes should, on its face, require a new election because it makes it impossible to determine who really won.

"We believe that anything over 129 (illegal votes) should be sufficient to say that the judge can decide to go on a proportionality argument," Lane added, meaning that the Republicans should be allowed to argue that illegal votes from King County, for example, presumably favored Gregoire by the same proportion as lawful King County votes did.

Since 884 of the 1,108 felons voted illegally in King County, which Gregoire carried with 58 percent of the votes to Rossi's 40 percent, "that is not good news for Christine Gregoire," Lane said.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more