Cox and Forkum on the Washington Election

Somewhat more succintly:

Heh.

John Fund on the Washington Election

In today’s Opinion Journal:

In Washington state, the errors by election officials have been compared to the antics of Inspector Clouseau, only clumsier. At least 1,200 more votes were counted in Seattle’s King County than the number of individual voters who can be accounted for. Other counties saw similar, albeit smaller, excess vote totals. More than 300 military personnel who were sent their absentee ballots too late to return them have signed affidavits saying they intended to vote for Mr. Rossi. Some 1 out of 20 ballots in King County that officials felt were marked unclearly were “enhanced” with Wite-Out or pens so that some had their original markings obliterated. Most disturbing is the revelation last week by King County officials that at least 348 unverified provisional ballots were fed directly into vote-counting machines.

“Did it happen? Yes. Unfortunately, that’s part of the process in King County,” elections superintendent Bill Huennekens told the Seattle Times. “It’s a very human process, and in some cases that did happen.”

King County elections director Dean Logan, Mr. Huennekens’ boss, also concedes the discrepancy between the number of ballots cast and the list of people who are recorded as voting. Even though the gap is 1,200 votes, he says, “that does not clearly indicate that the election would have turned out differently.” Are voters supposed to trust an election merely because it can’t “clearly” be shown to be hopelessly tainted? Mr. Logan is certainly singing a different tune now than he was on Nov. 18, when he responded to charges of voting irregularities in an e-mail to colleagues, which read in part:

“Unfortunately, I have come to expect this kind of unsubstantiated crap. It’s all too convenient, if not now fashionable, to stoop to this level when there is a close race.”

Slade Gorton, a Republican former state attorney general and U.S. senator who is advising Mr. Rossi, says a court should order a revote rather than declare valid one of the two earlier vote counts that Mr. Rossi won.

“No one can govern effectively under the cloud this race has created,” Mr. Gorton says. He notes that state law doesn’t require any showing of fraud to contest an election.

“That is irrelevant to whether the election should be done over,” he says. “The law is quite clear in giving a court the right to void any election where the number of illegal or mistaken votes exceeds the margin of victory, and it has done so in the past.”

This one ain’t over. A must read.

Who’s Maggie?

Carnival of the Cats #42 is up at Leslie’s Omnibus where some cat named Maggie is horning in on Daphne’s action. (Well, inaction actually, but you get the point.)

CBS Sheds Some Ballast

The long-awaited report on Ra^thergate has been released, and heads are rolling:

The action was prompted by the report of an independent panel that concluded that CBS News failed to follow basic journalistic principles in the preparation and reporting of the piece. The panel also said CBS News had compounded that failure with a — rigid and blind” defense of the 60 Minutes Wednesday report.

Asked to resign were Senior Vice President Betsy West, who supervised CBS News primetime programs; 60 Minutes Wednesday Executive Producer Josh Howard; and Howard’s deputy, Senior Broadcast Producer Mary Murphy. The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was terminated.

The correspondent on the story, CBS News anchor Dan Rather, is stepping down as anchor of The CBS Evening News but staying at CBS.

Everyone already knew about Rather – the big fish here is Mary Mapes. Had she kept her job, CBS might never have recovered its credibility.

The producer of the piece, Mary Mapes, was also faulted for calling Joe Lockhart, a senior official in the John Kerry campaign, prior to the airing of the piece, and offering to put Burkett in touch with him. The panel called Mapes’ action a — clear conflict of interest that created the appearance of political bias.”

Which is putting it mildly. Kudos to CBS for jettisoning the executives most responsible, but take one back for saving Dan Rather. The full report can be downloaded here with supporting material here.

Update Good coverage over in the Captain’s Quarters. Also analysis from Soxblog.