Rossi v. Gregoire: Democrat dishonesty
The Governor’s race has been largely quiet over the Thanksgiving weekend, but Josef, Pulling on Superman’s Cape and the whole crew at Sound Politics–among others–have been keeping tabs on it. Meanwhile, the conservative vote-fraud guru John Fund has weighed in, bringing quite a bit of blogospheric attention to the situation.
Meanwhile, with the vote to be certified tommorow, Gregoire is still insisting on a hand recount, despite the fact that even King County’s Democratic Elections Director admits that machine counts are more reliable than hand counts. And this little fact pulls any last shreds of honesty from the Democratic drive for a recount.
Consider this: the Democrats are not seeking a statewide recount, on the grounds that it’s expensive, and they can’t afford it. Fine, I’ll grant that. But consider this–Democrats have the option of asking for a machine count. And not only is the machine recount more reliable, it costs less. According to the Secretary of State’s website, a machine recount would cost the Democrats 40% less per vote than a hand recount. That means that Democrats could ensure that “every vote is counted” 40% better! Wouldn’t that be great?
Sure it would. Unless, like Christine Gregoire, you cling to the belief that “only a hand count… will protect people’s sacred right to vote,” despite no evidence to back up your assertion, and in the face of much evidence to refute it. It’s apparently supposed to be taken as an article of faith–so much for the “reality based society.”
Along those lines, I’d like to address a false analogy that I’ve heard twice now, in a couple different forms–once in the comments, and once on the radio. In the comments, Nelson said
Ever count a deck of cards and end up with 51? Of course, everyone has. What do you do? You re-count it to make sure. If the second count is still 51 you then look for a missing card to once again re-confirm the accuracy of the count. But if the second count is 52, you then feel comfortable dealing out a hand.
This is an utterly and completely inapt analogy. The only thing that it has in common with a recount of votes is that there are numbers involved. That’s it. This is not a deck of cards. It is not like we know the exact number of votes that should be counted, and then counted again because we didn’t find that number. We have no idea how many votes there are to be counted–and there’s no reason to believe that the third or fourth or fifth counts will somehow be more accurate than the first or second. Analogies like the above are simply dumb–do us all a favor the next time you hear it, and squash it like a bug.
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