Crossposted at
Preemptive Karma:
Oh to be a Republican in Washington State. The squealing and gnashing of teeth are now a daily event.
But alas in order to perpetuate the squealing and gnashing, they've got to offer up dishonest arguments for continuing their attempt to overturn the will of the voters in Washington State.
The memes of the moment are convicted felons who weren't supposed to vote but did. There's a number of problems with this particular excuse to get a revote.
First of all, the various state elections offices can't do a thing about it. According to my research, the elections offices in Washington State only remove convicted felons from the voter rolls when the courts tell them to. And sometimes a convicted felon may believe that their rights have been restored once they've served their time. That isn't always the case.
If a felon doesn't pay their restitution their rights aren't restored even if they've served their jail time. But the counties and the individuals in question aren't informed. As I understand it, there is no database in Washington State for counties to check against to see if their voter roles have been purged of convicted felons who haven't had their rights restored.
I submit that this is a really bad way for Washington State to handle the information so that everyone understands what is going on. But these rules and systems were in place BEFORE the election. The playing field was completely even. The Republicans now want to change the rules and have a new election based in part on this excuse. Ludicrous.
The Republicans are also on the hunt for nonresident voters. And once again, Sound Politics is leading the charge of ineptitude. The latest Stefan Sharkansy effort is to comb the voter rolls for individuals that have an address that's different from their resident address. Nevermind that Washington State has a large military and retired snowbird population. Even those who often comment on the blog are reminding Stefan of this. But alas...to no avail.
Update: I neglected to mention that the laws in Washington State require illegal voters to be identified BEFORE the election.