They didn't count Democtats' votes in 2000; now, they don't count Republican votes!

Washington State GOP chairman, Luke Esser

I was one of the few silly souls who actually wondered why the state declared McCain the winner of our state caucuses with only a couple of hundred votes between McCain and Huckabee ... and 13% of the ballots yet to be counted--or so I thought!

The truth was leaked out to everyone the next morning: They had no intention of counting the remaining ballots, including those from the western counties (where I live!) because ... there seemed to be no point in doing so--after all, anyone could see that McCain was ahead with almost all of the votes counted.

After Mike Huckabee sent his lawyers to our fair state to investigate, the Republican State Chairman, Luke Esser, said that he would try to get as close to 100% of the ballots counted as possible.

"almost"? "as close to 100% as possible"? What country do we live in anyway? Kenya? Russia in the 1950s?

At least the donnybrook in which I participated counted us all and phoned in the results post haste. Democrats (upper case "D") seem to believe in the democratic (lower case "d") process a bit more than do the Republicans on this side of the Rocky Mountains."

I picked up the following (from Huckabee's campaign staff via the Associated press):

[quote] 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. [unquote]

I repeat, "Lord love a duck!"

It may be several years before the Huckabee caucus voters come to the finish line ahead of the McCain voters and the Washington State GOP leadership's hurry (shown in photo to the right) to have every vote actually counted.