“The Huckabee Presidential Campaign will be exploring all available legal options regarding the dubious final results for the state of Washington State Republican precinct caucuses,” according to a statement posted today on their official campaign website.
It was 2:30am on the West Coast last night as we noticed CNN was reporting only 87% of precincts counted from Washington state’s Republican Caucus yesterday. Just over 200 votes separated the leader John McCain from Mike Huckabee in a very close second, with Ron Paul coming in a very close third.
Throughout the day, according to Josh Marshall at TPM, Huckabee had been leading in the returns until very late, when McCain pulled just ahead of him by just a few votes.
“With 87% of the returns counted,” writes Marshall, “the Washington state GOP, which runs the caucuses stopped releasing results. That left us and a lot of other news organizations in a bit of a quandary last night since it looked like McCain was going to pull it off. But as late as 1:30 AM on the east coast promised new results kept failing to materialize.”
And then, in the middle of the night, the state GOP posted a press release declaring McCain the winner, even with some 13% of the votes still unreported, and just 242 votes — out of 13,745 reported so far — separating McCain from Huckabee who’d finished a “strong second” according to the GOP release.
“In other words,” Huckabee campaign chair Ed Rollins says in their statement this morning, “more than one in eight Evergreen State Republicans have been disenfranchised by the actions of their own party.”
“Now, I think it would be borderline for a media organization to declare one candidate a winner when the margin separating first and second was 1.8% with 13% of the results still uncounted,” writes Marshall today. “But for the officials holding the election to declare the result on that basis is simply bizarre. But that’s what they did.”
Of course, none of that kept the always-responsible Reuters news service from declaring “McCain wins Washington state Republican contest” at 8:10am ET this morning.
This afternoon, the Huckabee camp is announcing they are prepared to go to court if necessary, as the candidate himself declared that “weird things” are going on in Washington while on NBC’s Meet the Press.
At the same time, the results of the GOP Louisiana Primary, as announced by the state, are even closer than those so far released in Washington. Though because the election was held on wholly unverifiable electronic voting machines, everyone will simply have to settle for whatever numbers the faith-based systems reported to them, no matter how close the margin…
Promising their “lawyers will be on the ground in Washington State soon,” and that the campaign is “prepared to go to court” and “prepared to take our case all the way to the Republican National Convention in September,” Rollins notes (ironically, or otherwise) in the campaign’s official statement…
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“All Republicans should unite to demand an honest accounting of the votes, so that Republicans can have full confidence in the results, and full confidence in the eventual Republican nominee.
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“Our cause is just. We must reemphasize the sacred American principle that all ballots be counted in a free, fair, and transparent manner.”
This morning, on Meet the Press, Huckabee made it clear he was not yet ready to concede the state, alleging some “weird things” going on, and that they were “looking at some legal issues up there.” Though host Tim Russert, little surprise, seemed less than interested, since he was already instructed by the party who had “won,” and far be it from him to question anybody or anything.
From this morning’s Meet the Press (video clip at right):
RUSSERT: But the party has declared it over.
HUCKABEE: They have, but there’s some weird things…We’re looking at some legal issues up there and we’re not ready to concede that one until we understand how it’s… [RUSSERT INTERRUPTS TO DISCUSS TUESDAY’S RACE IN VIRGINIA…]
As of 2:15pm PT today (Sunday), the Washington GOP website lists only percentages, not vote tallies, which is therefore not quite as demonstrative of how close the race really is at this hour, with even current third place finisher Paul coming up just behind Huckabee…
CNN’s graphic is a bit more helpful…
We’re not clear on the precise rules for the state’s GOP caucus, but if they’re anything like the Democratic Caucuses also held there yesterday, caucus goers show up and fill out a form, in person, with their name and address, stating who it is they are supporting. The Democrats tally up the votes then and there in front of everyone and then call the results in to the county party, which, in turn, reports them up to the state party.
Given that the number of caucus goers on the Democratic side — where counting was 96% reported by today — seems to have exceeded Republican turnout by approximately 17% (almost 5,000 votes), it’s quite odd that the GOP counting seems to have simply stopped at 87.2%.
On that note, the differences in turnout yesterday on the “D” and “R” sides may also be illustrative of what’s going on in the country, if Washington, which had previously been nearly evenly divided — the state’s hotly contested 2004 gubernatorial race was ultimately decided by just over 100 votes — is any indication.
With 96% of the returns reporting, according to CNN, some 32,000 caucus goers on the Democratic side gave Obama a clear 68% to 31% victory over Clinton in the Evergreen State.
Obama also reportedly won handily yesterday in Primaries held in both Nebraska and Louisiana, though, as we reported last night, his campaign had “submitted an urgent request for assistance to the Secretary of State” after “widespread reports from Democrats across Louisiana who reported that they were not allowed to vote because their party affiliation had been switched.”
A campaign statement posted to his website just after 7pm ET last night declared that “Hundreds of Louisiana democrats went to the polls to vote in today’s presidential primary, and found that they were now on registration lists as Independent or Unaffiliated voters.”
On the Republican side in Louisiana, with 100% of the precincts reporting, according to the state’s website, the margin separating first place Huckabee from second place finisher McCain is even closer than the Washington State contest, at least according to percentages. Huckabee is shown with 43% to McCain’s 42%, with just 2056 votes separating them.
We’ve yet to hear reports of registration problems with Republican voters in yesterday’s Primary. But the day is young. And in the recent Republican Caucus in the state, held at the end of January, allegations of registration irregularities emerged, leading to a challenge of the results by the Paul campaign who alleged that “due to mistakes by the Louisiana GOP, hundreds of voters were forced to file provisional ballots, including nearly 500 that could change the outcome of the election.”
Attempts to reach both the Louisiana Sec. of State’s office, as well as the state Republican Party, for additional comment, were unsuccessful this afternoon.
As to the result numbers from yesterday’s primary, as reported by the state of Louisiana, while McCain might be wise to contest such a narrow margin, they are derived from unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) push-button voting machines (similar to touch-screens) as made by Sequoia Voting Systems, which has had similar machines decertified in state after state. There is absolutely no way to verify that a single vote cast on any of them was recorded as the voter intended. So the election results in that state, even in a race as close as the one on the Republican side was, are 100% faith-based.
Sorry, John. You’ll just have to take your slim loss on faith, since there’s nothing to recount.
ARE YOU FRICKIN’ KIDDING ME? UPDATE 9:49pm PT: Apparently, the head of WA state’s Republican party just decided to stop counting votes from the GOP Caucus last night when he’d had enough and figured he could decide on his own who the winner would be. No need to waste more time and actually count the rest of the votes.
According to the Seattle Times’ David Postman, state GOP Chair Luke Esser just made the call on his own, and claims today that he “would have done the exact same thing if Governor Huckabee had the same lead, and the same number of votes were outstanding.”
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“Maybe it would have been safer if I hadn’t said anything. But it was an exciting and historic day for the state and I thought if I was confident about what the outcome would be I should share that with the people who had gone out to their caucuses.â€
Seriously, that’s what he said.
TPM’s Josh Marshall adds these thoughts, along with a “Late Update”:
I’m really not sure I’ve ever heard anything that ridiculous.
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I still find it pretty hard to imagine these bozos would try something quite this brazen. And it may well be an electoral tempest in a teapot. But this one looks and quacks like a duck. So someone should give it a much closer look.
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Late Update: It seems that Washington State GOP chair Luke Esser spent most of the day avoiding calls from the Huckabee campaign. And when he finally got back to them he told a lawyer for Huckabee’s campaign that they’d probably count the rest of the votes some time next week. When the lawyer, Lauren Huckabee, the candidate’s daughter-in-law, requested that a Huckabee lawyer be present when the remaining votes were counted, Esser hung up on her. Before the hang up, Huckabee also asked Esser about the DIY statistical analysis he did to conclude that he should call the race (Esser’s expertise in statistics apparently stems from previous work as a state prosecutor and a sports writer). Was there an analysis of what precincts the remaining votes came from? According to Huck campaign manager Ed Rollins, Esser admitted that he didn’t [know] which precincts the remaining votes came from.
Mind you this is the state that Republicans still point to when they wish to make the case about Democrats committing “voter fraud.” They reference the state’s razor thin 2004 Gubernatorial election where no fraud was ever found in the court case filed by the GOP up there, in no small part, because the GOP neither ever actually alleged fraud in their case, nor offered evidence for any…yet the phony folklore lives on.
As usual, the facts and the GOP’s own behavior, as demonstrated by the state party’s own outrageous behavior, tells the real story here.
UPDATE 2/11/08 8:55am PT: 93.3% of the votes now counted in the WA GOP Caucus, according to the WA GOP website which shows only a slight increase in Huck’s percentage, though they still list no actual vote counts. Just percentages. CNN still shows the same 87% precincts reporting (with vote counts) that they did as of late Saturday night, with no update since then. No idea who, if anyone, was there during the GOP’s additional counting. Will try to find out…
UPDATE 2/11/08 12:07pm PT: Wow! Get a load of this: Esser the Suppressor!
UPDATE 2/11/08 7:14pm PT: Seattle’s NBC affiliate reports “inconsistencies” in votes as reported by Snohomish County. ALSO: Esser the Suppressor’s ties to McCain’s state campaign chairman. Details now here…
I hope Huckabee really raises hell(pardon me)over this. I am glad that there are Republicans who are getting the short end of the stick from their own party and the light bulb is getting turned on about this for them.
This is an issue for all voters and possible election fraud can be practiced in a partisan fashion by any and all political parties. The mechanism is available and ready for utilization for the highest bidder.
I second that. Now we have two front runners , Huckabee and Obama calling foul. Yahooooo. We had near blizzard conditions today in Maine. Turnout was still good with huge number of first time caucus goers. Anybody else noticing Hillary loses big time in the caucuses? Harder to steal.Obama was at the civic center in Bangor yesterday and had almost 7,000 supporters. They were up in the trees so they could see him. This will definately be a hard election for corporate Hill to steal. I got 5 calls from the Hillary campaign and 0 from Obama.
For the record, Ron Paul called foul in Louisiana weeks ago, and on much more solid ground than these guys. Didn’t see much about that in the MSM though. He was left off ballots in New York. People in polling stations all over the place on Super Tuesday were telling voters that they could not vote for him because he dropped out.
Kucinich called foul in New Hampshire where there is massive evidence of potential election fraud, and yet the SOS reported to the MSM that there was no problem.
Albert Howard is also raising a stink in New Hampshire, which the MSM has ignored.
Bev Harris is carrying the torch of Democracy for all of us, but once again widely ignored by the MSM.
All of these people have legitimate concerns and yet they fall mostly on deaf ears. It takes someone like Obama or Huckabee to speak up before anyone opens their god damned ears, why is that?
If Hillary, Obama, Romney, or McCain had even a minute speck of integrity in their bodies they would have spoken up about this when it was happening to other people. These are your noble leaders, afraid to speak up for someone who has not been heard. Get used to it, because your about to have Hillarycare forced down your throat for 8 years while she garnishes your wages to pay for it.
watch the movie “Man of the Year”
then you’ll get the picture.
I was told that the in Washington State the Democrats pick their delegates from the caucus and that the GOP picks their delegates from a combination of the caucus returns and the mail in primary ballots. Could this account for the less than complete counting. When do the mail in ballots have to received to be valid? I thought the DEMs and GOP have different rules in this state.
Xargaw –
You are correct concerning the way WA selects delegates via their Primary and Caucus systems for each party. Though that would have nothing to do with the bizarre 87% tally done in the GOP caucus yesterday.
Not sure what the dates are for the mail-in Primary ballots (it’s not all mail-in, but mostly, sez VotersUnite.org’s John Gideon, who also happens to be a resident of WA).
Brad, I’ve been hearing odd reports from Washington. First of all, Dems had many more ballots to count, and got much further percentage-wise in finishing them. Republican results were coming in very slowly, and then they didn’t finish.
According to an MP3 interview with a guy supposedly in the building where Republican counting was taking place, two “suits” came in and started counting the votes and that was it. He said normally there would be 30ish people doing the counting and that he would be a part of it, but that this time they wouldn’t answer any of his questions and he wasn’t allowed in the room.
I think the deadline for the mail-in ballots is the 19th.
My wife is one who brought this on. She was pretty incensed at the way her Lakewood, Pierce County precinct (and by extension her district) caucus was run. The precinct officer was late, didn’t allow any discussion of candidate positions by precinct attendees, quickly and quietly chose all the McCain supporter names on the list of those wanting to run for delegate spots, and announced that these would be the precinct’s delegates for the next stage in the convention delegate selection process. My wife and the other non-McCain attendees were totally brushed off once they stated their candidate preference. She asked what was going on and the precinct officer responded by leaving the building. She objected to the head of the district caucus, but he shrugged it off. She emailed Huckabee campaign people and State Republican people, and the thing snowballed from there. Now she wants to avoid the media, because we’ve got a business to run, and don’t need the potential negative publicity. But she definitely stands by her statements to the campaign and pary officials.
That’s right about 19th. The other thing that’s strange is that the repubs decided to have the state run a primary, not the Dems. From what I hear, that’s so repubs can ID voters to try to support gov candidate Dino Rossi. It created a lot of confusion because Dems have names on the ballot, but it doesn’t count for anything except show.
Lots of Dems thought they had already voted, and didn’t realize the caucus is everything in terms of delegates.
Despite the many levels of disorganization in the caucus, it’s so refreshing to see votes counted right in front of constituents. I don’t know how the Republicans dealt with it, but it would be interesting to try to reconstruct the results from the grassroots level.
One more thought – it’s so great to shed light on Huck’s situation because it reveals how election integrity folks are truly non-partisan when it comes to fair counting of votes/delegates.
Next step for Obama supporters is to press the superdelegates to support the will of WA democratic voters. Hillary still holds a majority of superdelegates here while the vote went 68-32 for Obama.
A serious incompetence issue pervades the Amurkan political landscape theze daze.
Every Tom, Dick, and Esser wants to the “The Decider” these daze. The people who vote mean little to them.
It takes competence not to be a fascist (marrying raw power to one’s own illicit wants) thus the lack of competence in the realm of preznit blush and the best lil o whore house in Texas script they are reading from.
I think Huckabee would be less dangerous than McCain, but it ain’t going to happen. The military industrial oil complex and their puppet gummit of Amurka have decided.
Esser was simply speaking for the kingdom of R, the realm of BIG BROTHER.
Are we getting used to it yet?
I have an image of Huckabee playing base as his band sings the Dixie Chicks’ hit “Not Ready To Make Nice” (not ready to back down).
Molly. . .the only way calls get made is we make them. I went down to the Obama office and made calls for 3 hours yesterday to Maryland (I live in Oakland). My girlfriend is German and away for 3 months. She wanted me to check her messages and has a cell phone number. She had 7 robocalls from Hill. I am billing the minutes that I had to spend erasing them against Hillarys 5 million.
Let me do my own back of the envelope calculations, with a little added transparency. With 87.2% of the votes counted, McCain had 3468 and Huckabee 3226. This equals 6694 votes between, or, in other words, each percentage point of votes counted works out to them splitting 76.8 votes. (6694 divided by 87.2). With 93.3% of the vote counted, it is reported McCain has 3621 votes and Huckabee 3398. This works out to be 325 more votes divided between them. Except with an additional 6.1% of votes counted you would expect them to divide 468 votes (6.1 times 76.8). This is a big change, explainable by: a sudden shift among the 468 to the other candidates; or, something else that would cause the disappearance of 143 out of 468 votes. The first is testable. Did the fraction of votes go down for both McCain and Huckabee? No. According to the Washington State Republican Party website, with 87.2% counted, McCain had 25.5% and Huckabee 23.7%, a combined 49.2%. When 93.3% were counted, McCain had 25.4% and Huckabee 23.8%, a combined 49.2%. Their share of the vote was the same. By their own accounting, votes disappeared.
Dredd, we better get used to it, he-he
Time for the MSM to do the dirty deed
Scott Hortons new piece from Alabama
Link
Larisa says 60 Minutes is going to air their piece also
Link
Boy, wouldn’t it be nice to see Jeff Sessions and Rove go down too ?
Just so everyone knows the WA state primary is on Feb 19. Only the Repubs use the primary in their delegate formula. All Democratic delegates were chosen at the precinct caucuses. For the Dems the primary is pretty much meaningless except that it wastes a ton of tax payers money.
John #17
Thanks for the info. Wow, the money would be better spent selling the machines for scrap, and buying paper ballots.
I would volunteer to count for free as a public service, and I know there are millions of other citizens that would volunteer also.
This vendor greed thingy and electioneering waste has gotta go from every party and precinct.
Floridiot #16
Definitely. And Feinstein and Shumer along with him. Fascist Muckassy supporters.
Floridiot #14
That is a scary story you linked to. It is the truth about the Amurkan Department of
JusticeJust Us, which is worse now due to Muckassy, who was put there by the votes of demoCons Feinstein and Shumer.Molly at @2, I have learned about and become an admirer of the caucus system this primary season. It is a way to stymie the Diebold machines and it fosters political discourse which is what democracy should be about. There doesn’t seem to be that rancor you see in the ballot states. Is that an accurate perception?
RE post #11
McCain sings back at Huck …
Just a reminder of what is coming up.
Maryland and Virginia both use uncheckable,hackable touchscreen machines. On the Republican side,it would be logical that Huckabee would do very well in Virginia at least and McCain would probably win Maryland in an honest election.
On the Democratic side,one of the candidates has been losing lately. That candidate is the same one who benefited from New Hampshire when it was sorely needed. That need has again resurfaced this time without the “benefit” of theoretically checkable optical scan machines.
I would not,of course,want to hazard a guess as to what the outcomes might be.
#21..I am ashamed to admit..I didn’t go. Did not know that I had a caucus near my home and also wasn’t too interested in any of them. Too late making up my mind and finding out specifics..but whitenoiseinsanity, a maine website , gave a good rundown from southern Maine. She changed her mind during caucus from voting Kucinich to Obama.Lot of caucuses were way overcrowded for discussion. From what I’ve read up here in Maine anyway ..it is civil. Maine is like that.
As the curtain is pulled back, or perhaps as the rock is pulled away the vermin scurry towards the dark.
Don’t ya just love catchin’ ’em with their own numbers?
Still, the important thing is to fix the system!
Want to know how to stop all this nonsense dead?
Abolish primaries and adopt rank choice voting.
Who the HELL put political parties in charge of who we get to vote for in the real election? Why are we the people paying for private organizations’ “elections”? And why must a candidate kow-tow to a party just because he/she wants to serve the people? Those are just a few of the many questions we all ought to be asking about this rediculous process.
We can’t abolish political parties, nor should we (1st Amendment and all that), but we SHOULD get them the hell out of OUR election process. Anyone who wants to run in The Election – the General election – should be allowed to and the parties can back whoever they want – that’s their right. But everyone should essentially be running as an independent – EVERYONE. And let rank choice voting tabulate the results. Everyone will be much happier – everyone, that is, but the party bosses, but screw them! They’re the ones who have screwed up our democracy for decades. Throw the bums out.
NO PARTIES!!!!
It’s a big jump from saying that the Republican party officials called the winner too soon to saying that the election was stolen in favor John McCain.
McCain held a small lead over Mike Huckabee all through the counting, and I followed it because closely because I live in Washington state. With only a little more than 10 percent of the vote left to count, the party officals may have concluded that the there were not enough votes left to make it possible to change the result. Note that McCain and Huckabee between them were only getting about half of the total Republican vote. With about 1,000 votes left to split between them, it is unlikely that Huckabee could have overcome McCain’s lead given the day’s trends.
And what is Huckabee caterwauling about anyway? Didn’t he win two of three states and virtually tie McCain in a Northern tier state? I noticed McCain is not ranting about his narrow loss in Louisiana.
Saying this, I agree that with only 242 votes separating the candidate, it was probably too soon for the party itself to declare a winner until virtually all of the votes were counted.
This episode shows, if anything, that Huckabee is not a big picture kind of guy. What I see here is an effort on the part of the media to play on the idea, however incongruous, that the Republicans are dishonest in their conduct of elections and vote counting. Why is Huckabee playing into this anyway? Apparently, he can’t even see the big picture of one day where he did pretty darn well.
OH so you are not a big picture type of guy if you think all the votes should be counted.So, the republcian party is not really for preserving our american way of life. So are you saying that our votes last saturday done matter. So what is the republican party good for then. what happend is that the republican party leadership were found with their hand in the cookie jar
Well folks let me throw a few more issues into the mix. This morning I received the voting list (from a Spokane TV network) by county in Wash State. It is dated 2-11-08 9:15 PM. There are three candidates in close competition here in Wash. McCain 25.6%, Huckabee 23.3%, Paul 21.4% in their report. Romney, other, and uncommitted got the rest.Four of the counties that sent their totals in on 2-10-08, Sunday, were Benton Co, Grant Co, Jefferson Co, and Snohomish Co. All showing 100% of the precincts reporting. The next day, 2-11-08, all four counties sent in new reports. 2 at 100% reporting, 1 at 74% and 1 at 0% reporting. Jefferson Co reported zeros across the board. The differances in these two days from the four counties were Huckabee lost 537 delegates, McCain lost 477 delegates, Paul lost 327 delegates. Looks awful fishy to me, especially since Esser, WA GOP said they would finish county Monday. Somebody counted on Sunday and sure had a lot different numbers than what was evidently recounted on Monday.