Vote-counting mischief in Washington’s GOP primary?

February 11, 2008

By Saturday night, John McCain had already experienced a pretty rough day. He’d been trounced by Mike Huckabee in the Kansas caucuses, and then learned he’d been beaten handily in Louisiana GOP primary. In Washington state, which was supposed to be a far easier win for the Arizona senator, McCain was trailing Huckabee for part of the night, but with 87% of the precincts reporting, McCain had a narrow lead, which was less than two percentage points.

That’s when it got a little odd. Election watchers kept an eye on the results, waiting for additional precincts to report, and wondering whether McCain’s narrow lead would evaporate. The funny thing was, additional precincts didn’t report. Despite the narrow margin, and with plenty of votes left to go, the state Republican Party stopped counting and declared McCain the winner.

As Josh Marshall noted yesterday:

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. But for the officials holding the election to declare the result on that basis is simply bizarre. But that’s what they did.

Josh certainly isn’t the only one to find the events unusual. On “Meet the Press” yesterday, Huckabee argued that the Washington state caucuses were “still too close to call.” When Russert responded, “Well, the party has declared it over,” Huckabee said, “They have, but there’s some weird things.”

So, weird, in fact, that the Huckabee campaign is sending in the lawyers.

By yesterday afternoon, the campaign issued a statement insisting that it “will be exploring all available legal options regarding the dubious final results for the state of Washington State Republican precinct caucuses.” It added that the campaign is “deeply disturbed by the obvious irregularities,” and argued that the state GOP “disenfranchised” more than one in eight Republican voters in Washington.

Asked for an explanation, state Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser said he just felt confident that the other 13% of the votes didn’t need to be counted. He told reporters, “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.”

It gets worse.

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 prosectur 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 which precincts the remaining votes came from.

According to a report in the Seattle Times this morning, Esser has vowed to get as “close as we can to 100 percent” in the vote count. How reassuring.

As for the best response to this flap, I think a TPM reader nailed it: “Nice to know the Repubs have progressed from 2000 where they refused to count Democratic votes, to 2008 where they are now refusing to count their own votes.”

It’s a story ripe with possibilities. I’ll keep you posted.

Wow.

The quote from Esser is just chilling. There’s basically nothing to it. He stopped counting the votes because he FELT like it.

  • Maybe now we can move forward with a truly transparent vote counting system? Now that a large number of Republicans have also personally experienced how corrosive to Democracy opaque counting shemes are? Even if the votes aren’t being stolen, counting them in the back room should be totally unacceptable.

    Maybe NOW we can finally throw away the tinfoil and implement a standardized system where verifiable votes are counted out in the open, and not inside proprietary software.

    Or not.

  • I get the odd feeling that, since 2000, the Republicans require that all their candidates for office have some feel of illegitimacy about them…

  • I heard independents were allowed to vote in Florida despite it being a closed election. That certainly helped McCain, who was endorsed by the governor there.

    Hmmm…. could this be a pattern.

  • Why isn’t the Straight Talk Express calling for a full vote count? Is McCain afraid to hear the straight vote of Washington Republicans?

  • If you heard independents were allowed to vote in FL for a candidate then you were misinformed. Independents were allowed to vote on a ballot issue only reguarding property taxes.

  • “John McCain had already experienced a pretty rough day. He’d been trounced by Mike Huckabee in the Kansas caucuses, and then learned he’d been beaten handily in Louisiana GOP primary.”

    “Beaten handily?” McCain only lost 43% to 42%. And I thought I heard that it was so close the Republican Party elders were going to decided it behind closed doors later on. Am I wrong here? In any case, while integrity is evidently not particularly important to Republicans, I have to believe that they see this as a problem with Independents.

  • Washington held an open caucus on February 9th, as I recall, and not a primary (WA primary is the 19th).

    Does anyone know how caucus results are reported, since there are no “votes” as in a primary?

  • I did some of my own back of the envelope scratching, just like Esser:

    The difference between McCain and Huck comes down to 242 votes, 1.8% of counted votes, which makes the counted votes 13444, or 87% of the total, which calcs out to be: 15453.

    Read it: 15,000 Republicans caucused in Washington. Fifteen-piddly-thousand!!!

    That’s what should be the story: 15,000 Republicans, versus ~200,000 Democrats.

    I love the smell of roasted freeper in the morning.

    BTW, expanding the same calcs shows that Huck would have to win about 62% of the remaining votes in order to erase McCain’s lead, which going just by the numbers is pretty unlikely but Huck’s lawyer was correct in implying that if the remaining precincts to be counted are out in Redneckistan, WA, then Mikey might just pull it off.

  • Sorry Anne,
    Can’t answer that exactly…..I thought that the caucus results were reported as delegates….in that 2/3 delegates in the GOP primary were awarded based on caucus, and 1/3 by primary vote.
    But I do know that the Republicans in our large county attending the caucus were PISSED-OFF. How else do you account for the Huckabee win, ROMNEY 2nd, R. Paul 3rd, and McCain 4th finish???? That’s a diss for sure, and probably an embarrassment for the GOP of our state. They’d probably vote for a corpse over McCain.

  • re-tool – I think I knew that the results are reported as delegates, but who actually reports them? Is someone in each precinct responsible for recording the caucus results and then transmitting that tally to the various county boards of elections?

  • Boy, I can’t wait to hear from the media exactly how this demonstrates how bitterly divided the Democrats are.

  • “It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” ~Joseph Stalin

  • It was not only that they stopped counting at 83%. They stopped at 17% for a long time too. It looked like Ron Paul might beat McCain. McCain was only ahead of Paul by about 2% at that point.

  • There is no question Huckabee has won Washington, and that at the very least, they wanted to stop the “Huckabee sweep” narrative in the following analysis. How often do you stop counting, even if it’s a blowout? You don’t. There’s only one reason to stop it when it’s this close: you don’t like the results. There’s no other explanation.

    And this is where we get our media conspiracies from. Russert’s antenna didn’t go off, Huckabee’s did. He jumped in to declare Washington McCain’s. It was Huckabee — HUCKABEE — who raised the obvious question, which appeared like sour grapes.

    Why is the MSM protecting these guys? If this were a one-inch dimple peeking out of a V-neck, you’d hear about it.

  • Is there any doubt that part of the Rethug playbook is fixing elections? It was only a question of time before they started fixing their own primaries and eating their own.

  • Look to the Dems to lay down and play dead when the Rethugs commit “election irregularities” during the General. This is what troubles me–the criminality of the Rethugs and the enabling of the spineless Dems.

  • If someone without CB’s credibility had just told me this story, I’d have bet large amounts of money that it was satire dreamed up by the Onion. But Republican surreality once again exceeds anything the Onion can come up with. If it didn’t threaten the stability of the Republic, it would be excruciatingly funny, but as it is, it’s just excruciating.

  • If it is mathematically impossible for McCain to lose, going to vote is a waste of time, unless of course you don’t like the man, then your vote is making a point.

    McCain supporters are staying home, Huckabee & Paul (and Romney) supporters are voting.

    Back the post, I remember about two years ago when the R’s in Congress were voting for party leadership. The first tally had more votes then people. My point is does anyone really find this out of character, it’s business as usual.

    The ENDS always justify the MEANS.

  • I am a strong Huckabee supporter, and I had already been disgusted prior to this travisty of justice. There has been so much un-fairness and disrespect in the form of neglect going on towards Huckabee, I can hardly bear it. I am so angry right now, that I have almost (almost) decided that if Huckabee does not somehow become the nominee, or is not at least invited to be VP if he does not win the nominee, I may indeed hold my own protest against the Republican party I have supported since I became of age to vote, by either not voting in the general election, or, maybe even voting for the democrat. Maybe when I cool down I will not go that far, but I for sure would not cast a vote for anybody as a way of protest.
    I have to go now and make phone calls for Huckabee. GO MIKE!!!

  • To build on what Tim Kelley #16 says, I would also like to receive a paper receipt itemizing my selections. I also want that receipt to include a distinct identifier. I want the ballot information to be transmitted to a secure server at the state board of elections and subsequently used to tally state results. I want to use the distinct identifier on my paper receipt to subsequently view my ballot selections on the state board of elections web site. Perhaps only 1% of the electorate would bother, but that 1% can provide a powerful and cheap auditing tool. It might not hurt to classify ballot tampering as a capital offense.

  • The dishonesty here is quite plain to see. This isn’t just a Republican phenomenon; plenty of voting shenanigans go on in the Democratic camp also. But I cannot imagine us conservatives doing any such thing. Perhaps, that’s why we lose most elections. I think that whatever laws there are governing elections, they should be enforced and invoke long prison terms for some cheats. After all, this threatens democracy.

  • Anne:
    I know how the votes were reported for the Democratic Caucuses in WA. I was the secretary in our little precinct. We tallied the votes, had little speeches in support of each candidate, gave everyone a chance to change their vote, then re-tallied, calculated the number of delegates each candidate received (based on the percentage of the vote), elected delegates, and then put all the information in a manila envelope and gave it to the “Captain” in our caucus location. There were about 12 precincts meeting in our location. It was the Captain’s job to report the results up the chain. Hope this helps.
    The Esser fiasco is big news around here, and everyone I know is laughing and shaking his/her head at the irony of it all. After the recount of the Governor’s race in 2004 showed that the Dem had won, there was a huge amount of whining (and suing) by state Republicans. The Dems cheated; the Dems cheated! Sigh. I guess we can put THAT to rest now.

  • There were NO VOTES for any GOP presidential candidate cast in Washington on Saturday. NO DELEGATES have been awarded to any candidate. There is NO WAY to extrapolate national delegate totals from Saturday’s results. NO CANDIDATE “won” anything relevant.

    See this post on Sound Politics (and the comments) to understand what’s going on.

    All this fuss is over non-binding statements of preference which have no direct impact on the selection of Washington’s national convention delegation. It’s like a straw poll. That’s it. That’s what everyone is freaking out about.

    Only county convention delegates were elected at the caucuses, and they are not pledged to any candidate. No one has alleged any irregularities in this actual vote-counting. Nothing was “fixed,” and there was no “conspiracy.”

    There is some question over whether all counties even broke out the preference statements of the actual delegates or reported the preferences of all caucus-goers. The reason this is all such a cluster-f*** is that no provision was made for efficiently counting and reporting these numbers (which are meaningless to anyone except party number-crunchers), but GOP chairman Luke Esser took it upon himself to release them on Saturday night as “caucus results.” They aren’t anything of the sort.

    If there’s a scandal here, it’s that the state GOP pretended that these numbers have some meaning that they don’t have and awarded McCain a “victory” in a contest which did not exist. It’s nothing to do with either vote fraud or incompetence in counting votes.

  • Okay, if the message isn’t clear by now retract the declaration of victory, do a recount with Huckabee’s lawyers and McCain’s lawyers present; and let the chips fall where they fall.

  • “retract the declaration of victory”

    They should. And Luke Esser should apologize and explain exactly what those numbers mean in real life. I doubt it will happen.

    In fact, I would expect McCain to end up getting 100% of the delegates awarded through the caucuses and conventions, so in that sense Esser will turn out to be right, in a sense. He’s just not right yet.

    “do a recount with Huckabee’s lawyers and McCain’s lawyers present”

    Recount what? Meaningless, non-binding preference statements? What would be the point?

    In any case, even the first count isn’t done yet. When it is done, there is no reason to believe that it won’t be accurate. It just won’t be meaningful, and recounting it won’t make it any more meaningful.

    “and let the chips fall where they fall.”

    There are no chips.

  • In any case, even if the state GOP’s final numbers are badly wrong (and, again, there’s no reason to think they will be), it doesn’t matter in terms of what happens at the conventions. Those who were elected county convention delegates will be going to the county convention even if the state party misreported their preferences.

    In other words, if Huckabee actually “won” the nonbinding poll of delegate preferences, then it is his supporters who will make up a plurality at their county conventions (though they may change their minds about supporting him between now and then).

    Is it really worth doing a recount of numbers which don’t matter, and which wouldn’t matter even if they mattered?

  • Here’s another sensible post from Sound Politics.

    Apparently these are the same sorts of numbers that other states report as “caucus results,” which I did not realize. It still seems stupid to me to do so unless delegates are pledged, but apparently that’s the way it’s done. So Esser’s mistake was in declaring too quickly. And a recount would still be a silly idea.

    The delegates are who they are, and recounting would not change the results, even if it changed the reporting of the results (which it would very probably not).

  • What a bunch of fools you all are. The Democrats won the Governorship by cheating in the last election. Now the Republicans simply picked up where the Demo’s left off. I am so sicck of people who don’t have a foolish clue.

  • Gee Huckabee, kinda sucks – like the West Virgina caucus. You know what they say – what goes around comes around!

  • check out this lovely gem that appeared on talkingpointsmemo – it’s an excerpt from a “humorous” piece that Esser wrote for the UW paper back in college:

    Like any sport worth its salt, in politics you have adversaries, opponents, enemies. Our enemies are loudmouth leftists and shiftless deadbeats. To win the election, we have to keep as many of these people away from the polls as possible.
    Now your average leftist loudmouth is a committed individual and can almost never be persuaded to ignore his constitutional rights. The deadbeats, however, are a different matter entirely. Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.

    Many of the most successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes, sound beatings, etc.) that conservatives have used in the past have been outlawed by busybody judges.

    The only means of persuasion left available to us are Acts of God, who we know is exclusively on our side. I’m talking about seriously inclement weather. I want Biblical floods and pestilence. I will settle for rain, sweet rain. The deadbeats won’t even go out in the rain for their welfare checks (they send one of their social workers to pick it up). There’s no way they’ll vote if it’s raining.

    later in the piece he claims that he and a few of his pals will be doing a “rain dance” on election day for said purpose. isn’t he a hoot?

  • Please, ScottM

    It doesn’t matter if it’s a “hands up who wants ice cream” in a kindergarten. If the votes aren’t counted properly, it’s fraud.

    End of.

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