Politics from the Palouse to Puget Sound

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Public Disclosure

Poking around the PDC web site, I have found all kinds of interesting things. For example, go here, select "WHITMAN CO DEMO CENT COMM" and enter "2005" as the election year. Looks like our local Dems spent $369.60 on yard signs, buttons, etc. back in August. That's weird. There wasn't a single Democratic candidate on the ballot this year. But August is when Judy Krueger signs started appearing around town. Hmmmm.

If you go here select "WHITMAN CO DEMO CENT COMM" and enter "2005" as the election year, you will see that the Whitman County Democrats have raised a respectable $1,929.14 in an off year. A certain well-known PARD member even chipped in $50 and there were some $156 in "anonymous" cash contributions.

Again, no record of any Whitman County Republican contributions or expenditures for this election year.

8 comments:

April E. Coggins said...

According to the PDC site, the Whitman County Dems have been busy as bees during this last "non-partisan" election.

cc said...

Off topic but...
Have you all heard Eunice Coker is going to push for all mail voting here in Whitman County? I haven't read the specifics yet.

Unknown said...

Wonderful. Now we can franchise voter fraud the way King County has. I can't wait to see some of the mailing addresses people use in Pullman (Martin Stadium, Ferdinand's, etc.)

April E. Coggins said...

Here are some links to a blog by the writer for the Whitman County Gazette. The first is about his suspicions during the 11/05 elections, the second is his story about the huge problem in the 11/04 election.

http://nugeworthy.blogspot.com/2005/11/election-coverage-etc.html

http://nugeclips.blogspot.com/2005/05/783-provisionals-mishandled-ballots.html

Scotty said...

I don't want to rock the boat here, but I know the people in Elections and have worked with them for more than two years. I don't believe for a moment that anything they do wrong is intentional. Debbie was thrown on the hotseat after the old elections boss quit because she was upset about something not going her way. With her quitting out of the blue, no one was properly trained to do it. Debbie was thrown to the sea. It was sink or swim. She has worked her butt off to swim. And she has learned a lot in her time.

In the case of vote from home, a few of the reasons we are going that way can be traced to the presidential election of 2000. In order to fix problems with the system, the federal government and state governments are forcing local governments to follow certain new laws. Many of these new changes are very expensive to implement. Which means the cheaper way to go is to use vote by mail.

The amount of money the county would have to invest in computers for all the polling places would be very large. They would have to have computers in polling places where maybe two ballots get cast on any given election. Then you have to train all the volunteers on how to run them. Plus the cost of the software to run the system (the voting software). The costs are just way too much for Whitman County.

Unknown said...

I have never personally believed that the problem with voting in Whitman County is with the Auditors Office. Rather, I think it is attributable to certain parties and candidates, such as the ones that take out ads in the Evergreen on Election Day and encourage WSU students to go vote via provisional ballot at the Pioneer Center.

April E. Coggins said...

I don't think Whitman County is throwing elections to Democrats. I think they are people like me who are overwhelmed with slick political manipulations. The Auditors office is a house of bookeepers. They should do as all bookeepers do, check and recheck again. They are well paid to keep our elections honest. The easy and lazy assumption that every is honest may be nice but is not practical.

cc said...

Scotty,

I have worked with Debbie and Eunice on a professional basis for the past few years. I don't believe they have ever done anything intentional. However,... they are taking their marching orders from the powers that be; Dean Logan and Sam "I am not a Republican" Reed.

I also know the former elections supervisor, Phyllis Leland, and she retired. (She didn't quit on a moments notice.) She trained Debbie for almost a year. Granted, there was no presidential election, but Debbie did get her training from a very tough cookie.