Shenanigans in Washington State

Now here's an interesting story. The Republican Party in Washington state is having a hard time counting all of the ballots from their caucuses the other day. With only 87% of the ballots counted, and with McCain nursing a lead of less than 2% over Mike Huckabee, state GOP chair Luke Esser declared McCain the winner. Here is a brief rundown of the night's events, courtesy of Josh Marshall of TPM.

Maybe calling an election off with only 87% isn't enough to make you think there's something fishy in these degraded times of ours. Maybe this will.

This was based on my recollection. But this afternoon we went back and checked our election night notes (remember we report results in real time). And here's the progression of events.

According to our records (and I would strongly suggest other people with information check this against their data), the first report came in at roughly 9:30 PM eastern. With 16% of the vote, McCain ahead 27% to 26%.

Then at 10:15 PM, with 37% of the vote in, Huckabee moves ahead 26% to 23%.

Then there was an hour delay until the next update. That comes shortly after 11:15 PM, with 78% counted, McCain has moved ahead -- 25.4% to 23.8%.

Then there's another delay of an hour and twenty minutes. Shortly after 12:35, they get to 83% of the vote and now it's McCain 25.6% and Huckabee 23.8%.

The next update comes at 1:30 AM eastern. By this time they've counted a whopping 4% more of the vote. And with 87% reporting, it's McCain 25.5% to 23.7%.

So just to summarize here's basically how this works. We start out with McCain ahead. Huckabee jumps ahead with a 3% margin with almost 40% of the vote counted. Then everything slows waaaaay down. And we don't see anything else until about 40% more of the votes been counted and McCain is back in the lead. Things then proceed a glacial pace with Huckabee a little less than 2 percentage points back until 9% more of the vote is counted. And then they decide to declare McCain the winner. Not quite as cut and dry as the conclusion of a Scooby-Doo episode. But pretty close.

Sound fishy to you?

Anyway, Huckabee thinks things are fishy and has hired a bunch of lawyers to head up to Washington to look into the results.

But what really got me interested in this was a quote from an article Esser wrote in 1986 while he was in college. Remember, this is the guy who is in charge of counting people's votes:

Like any sport worth its salt, in politics you have adversaries, opponents, enemies. Our enemies are loudmouth leftists and shiftless deadbeats. To win the election, we have to keep as many of these people away from the polls as possible.

Now your average leftist loudmouth is a committed individual and can almost never be persuaded to ignore his constitutional rights. The deadbeats, however, are a different matter entirely. Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.

Many of the most successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes, sound beatings, etc.) that conservatives have used in the past have been outlawed by busybody judges.

The only means of persuasion left available to us are Acts of God, who we know is exclusively on our side. I’m talking about seriously inclement weather. I want Biblical floods and pestilence. I will settle for rain, sweet rain. The deadbeats won’t even go out in the rain for their welfare checks (they send one of their social workers to pick it up). There’s no way they’ll vote if it’s raining.

Busybody judges, eh? Wouldn't it be better if we went back to the 19th century when we just killed black people for showing up at the polls? That's a damn effective way to stop someone from voting as it has the added bonus of preventing them from trying again in the future.

Wow... and this isn't like we're talking about Strom Thurmond here. It's not like Esser wrote this back in the Jim Crow era. He wrote this in 1986. How in the world did this guy get elected chair of the state GOP? Yikes.

I will be following this story with great interest as it continues to develop. If you want to follow it as well, Talking Points Memo is following things pretty closely.

Update: Huckabee is now demanding a recount.

Update #2: Turns out, Esser is a close political ally of state Attorney General Rob McKenna who helped get him appointed as Washington GOP chair. McKenna is the chairman of the McCain campaign in Washington.