WA governor's race

[marqueemoon]

Anyone else been following this? If you think your vote doesn't count you probably should.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/l ... unt23.html

[Karlos the Jackal]

Oh, it's crazy. I'm in favor of dragging it out to the bitter end -- let Gregoire and Rossi demand as many recounts as they want until we can say, "fine, that's it, that's every single vote. We're done."

This will of course never happen -- no matter who wins, the loser will be saying that so-and-so votes should have been counted, and these-or-those votes shouldn't have.

Bleah.

--K

[ottokbre]

I think we are past recount, we are now on revote.

I think it would be terrible if Gergiore won if you think about the PR disaster that would insue.

[marqueemoon]

I think we are past recount, we are now on revote.

I think it would be terrible if Gergiore won if you think about the PR disaster that would insue.

Maybe, but I think Gregoire's kept her nose pretty clean during the whole crazy recount thing. If we do have to re-vote hope this doesn't drag on long enough for people to forget Rossi's slimy attack ads and other assorted bullshit.

[andrew embassy]

leading by 130 votes...

[marqueemoon]

leading by 130 votes...

WooHoo!

[bad_dude_69]

now on to the presidential election...

[swingdoc]

As far as I can tell its over. Gregoire is gonna have the office.
But, I agree with the above comment on the backlash. I get the feeling that the dems are gonna have a harder time in upcoming elections.

[ottokbre]

wow, its over. what a roller coaster. I hope she kicks ass. she will have a hard time making east-staters satisfied with her. they had their man for once and they lost him.

[TrumpsHair]

Swingdoc and Ottokbre joined this yellow forum on the very same day. May 7, 2003. But Ottokbre has 700 more posts.

BTW. Kerry won. The recount in Ohio will show that Bush is monkey-man.

[Mr. Dipity]

Does anyone else here have a problem about the all this winning by such a slim margins?

It behooves the winner to basicly split the office with the loser. But, such a process would be impossible, since one side is pretty much about trying to legislate us back into feudalism and the other side will never have the power it needs to stop them.

But still: if the only way to win is by their rules, haven't they won already?

What can be done to stop the lowest common denominator from continuing to making us eat the candy-covered turd that is closest to their lazy-boy chair?

[swingdoc]

Swingdoc and Ottokbre joined this yellow forum on the very same day. May 7, 2003. But Ottokbre has 700 more posts.

I demand a recount. By hand. I dont trust machines.

BTW. Kerry won. The recount in Ohio will show that Bush is monkey-man.

Especially if you use the King County election officials. They're quite talented in recounting.

[jmiller]

What can be done to stop the lowest common denominator from continuing to making us eat the candy-covered turd that is closest to their lazy-boy chair?

BTW, i do think it's a shame that things are so close right now.

[apropos of nothing]

I like the necklace-of-scorpions northern-European style parliments where the leading party and the 2nd runner-up party have to form a coalition, without which they'll both be immobilized. That's pretty awesome. Combine that with executive veto power, and you've got a pretty decent system of checks-and.

[swingdoc]

Oh boy, heres what I did tonight....

Here's a brief statistical look at the numbers of the 2 recounts (machine/ hand); (Applied just for Rossi/Gregoire)

Machine:
All other counties excluding King:
total votes 1,887,963 Change: +26 Rossi (0.001377%);
King: 856,963 Change : +245 gregoire (0.02859%)

Hand:
All other counties excluding King:
total votes: 1,889,094 Change +7 Rossi (0.0003705%);
King 857,500 change +179 gregoire (0.020875%)

Combined:
All other counties excluding King: total votes recounted: 3,777,058 +33 Rossi (0.00087369%)
King: 1,694,463 + 424 gregoire (0.0250227%)

So my quick math shows that the change rate in all other counties is just 35/1000ths of the change rate in King Co.
Or this is to say, King county changed their votes by a factor of 286 times (or 2,864%) the rate that all other counties combined changed their votes.
I did the probablity determination using chi-squared analysis.
Sounds like this:
I used all the counties except King County as the control, or that which demonstrates the expected vote change rate of the recount.
The rate of vote change (unilateral) was +33 out of 3,777,058 or 0.000873%
So, the same expected rate of change for King Co (1,694,463) would be +14 , but the actual observed number was 424.
We want to know whether this reflects a statistically significant variation, or whether it's just coincidence. Statistical calculations cannot of course answer this definitively, but we can answer a related one: If the rate of change is determined at 0.00873%, what is the probability of 424 votes changing out of 1,694,463 votes?

Here's the answer:
P value and statistical significance:
Chi squared equals 12007.242 with 1 degrees of freedom.
The two-tailed P value is less than 0.0001
By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be extremely statistically significant.

So there it is. Based purely on the numbers of the rate of vote change, (King County compared to all others) I do not believe that one can reasonably assume random variation in the way the votes changed.
If it was not random, then by definition it must be considered a guided or biased change.
Notice too, that this is simply a numerical analysis of the variation of the recounting, or a review of the proposed system "error" rate.

I must conclude therefore that there is absolutely no scientific confidence in the recount changes (King Co vs all others) as being a random statistical event.

Take care ya'll,
and Merry Christmas,
Mark