I’m a Big Nerd
Today’s clue is that I’m sitting at home in my pajamas watching oral arguments before Washington State Surpreme court. I just learned about the fascinating way in which court of appeals judges are selected to pinch-hit for on SC, which seems unnecessarily complicated.
The issue before the court is the 700+ ballots King County screwed up and didn’t count last time. I don’t really follow the local courts, but I’m predicting the court will rule to count these votes. The reason: Sam Reed, our GOP Secretary of state who has a reputation for evenhanded fairness and reasonableness and general non-wingnuttery (Republican grownup sighting!).
The Sec-state lawyer is explaining why they opposed re-evaluating all rejected ballots on substantive grounds (agreeing with the GOP) before the court last week, but they support allowing canvassing boards to include ballots excluded on procedural grounds. He’s making sense, and he’s being asked some strange non-sequitor questions by the Chief Justice, who seems obsessed with the fact that some of the votes he wanted to exclude last week he’s now arguing to include.
….I don’t know if the justices are asking stupid questions intentionally to trip up and/or test the lawyers, but some of these questions would make it appear as though they don’t understand basic points of election law that I’ve learned. They’re wasting Ahearne’s (Sec. state lawyer) valuable time.
According to Berendt, Gregoire wins by eight without these ballots. With them, she’ll probably win by nearly 100.
The people who made the argument that King County was trying to “steal” this election really look stupid now; King County’s incompetent and wrong dismissal of perfectly valid ballots nearly handed the Governor’s mansion to Rossi, unless a Republican Secretary of State can bail them out.
Update: As noted by a commenter at Daily Kos, Moby has apparently become a Republican lawyer.
Substantive update: In general, the questions addressed to Moby were challenging and somewhat hostile, and he appeared to flounder at times. He also said things that appeared to directly contradict the statements made by the Sec state lawyer (specifically regarding whether what’s happening in KC is different than all other counties), and the court seemed to trust the latter a fair bit more. I remain optimistic the ruling will be to include the votes.