What is going on in Washington state?

Very interesting. A three state sweep by Huckabee would be a real statement to McCain that he is expected to swing to the right just when he should be moving to the middle.

About that GOP caucus in Washington state..

It just gets weirder and weirder.

The Dems are having a lot of contention - and there were even whole ballot boxes taken home for the night by party officials in New Mexico ( ). But even so, there's nothing been quite as brazen as what the Washington GOP did!

Quote:

WTF?

By Josh Marshall

As you know, [..] we've been really curious what happened in the Republican caucus in Washington state. For probably the first time in all the primaries and elections I've ever watched, the folks running the election decided to stop counting the votes with 13% of the votes uncounted. And this wasn't a 70-30 blow out, but a tight race where the two top vote getters were separated by less than 2% of the vote. Then this morning, state party chair Luke Esser decided to declare McCain the winner.

Now, when we were watching this last night [..] I was assuming they'd come forward with some story that there was some hang up with the votes or some mechanical issue. [..] But state party chair Luke Esser said that he just thought it was the right thing to do. According to Esser, sometime overnight Esser did some sort of back of the envelope statistical analysis of the the margin of McCain's lead (1.8%) and the number votes left uncounted (13%) and decided that Huckabee didn't have a chance and he'd shut the thing down and declare McCain the winner.

So was that a good idea? Here's Esser's rationale ...

"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."

So it was just such a rollicking good time Esser figured he owed the participants a decision as long as he was confident what the outcome would be.

I'm really not sure I've ever heard anything that ridiculous.

In terms of consequence, Bush v. Gore it ain't. This is a relatively small contest in a nomination campaign that appears to be over. But this is something you'd expect either from Soviet history or a farcical passage in a Faulkner novel. And let's not forget the context. Huckabee starts the day with a blowout win in Kansas. That evening he gets the largest number of votes in Louisiana. Then in the third contest he's neck and neck with John McCain and looks like he may win all three contests of the day -- a shut-out for the all-but-declared nominee. Then as it's going down to the wire, the head of the state party decides he's seen enough and calls it for McCain.

[A]s we watched the rate of the reporting slow to halt on Saturday evening, we joked amongst ourselves that with McCain already getting beaten by Huckabee twice that day maybe the organizers of the election figured that if they just held out long enough people would just forget they'd held a caucus. But as it got later and later we started to wonder if it wasn't a joke.

I still find it pretty hard to imagine [they] would try something quite this brazen. And it may well be an electoral tempest in a teapot. But this one looks and quacks like a duck. So someone should give it a much closer look.

Late Update: 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.

Before the hang up, Huckabee also asked Esser about the DIY statistical analysis he did to conclude that he should call the race (Esser's expertise in statistics apparently stems from previous work as a state prosecutor and a sports writer). Was there an analysis of what precincts the remaining votes came from? According to Huck campaign manager Ed Rollins, Esser admitted that he didn't know which precincts the remaining votes came from.

This is apparently what's going on...

nimh wrote:

About that GOP caucus in Washington state..

It just gets weirder and weirder.

The Dems are having a lot of contention - and there were even whole ballot boxes taken home for the night by party officials in New Mexico ( ). But even so, there's nothing been quite as brazen as what the Washington GOP did!

Quote:

WTF?

By Josh Marshall

As you know, [..] we've been really curious what happened in the Republican caucus in Washington state. For probably the first time in all the primaries and elections I've ever watched, the folks running the election decided to stop counting the votes with 13% of the votes uncounted. And this wasn't a 70-30 blow out, but a tight race where the two top vote getters were separated by less than 2% of the vote. Then this morning, state party chair Luke Esser decided to declare McCain the winner.

Now, when we were watching this last night [..] I was assuming they'd come forward with some story that there was some hang up with the votes or some mechanical issue. [..] But state party chair Luke Esser said that he just thought it was the right thing to do. According to Esser, sometime overnight Esser did some sort of back of the envelope statistical analysis of the the margin of McCain's lead (1.8%) and the number votes left uncounted (13%) and decided that Huckabee didn't have a chance and he'd shut the thing down and declare McCain the winner.

So was that a good idea? Here's Esser's rationale ...

"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."

So it was just such a rollicking good time Esser figured he owed the participants a decision as long as he was confident what the outcome would be.

I'm really not sure I've ever heard anything that ridiculous.

In terms of consequence, Bush v. Gore it ain't. This is a relatively small contest in a nomination campaign that appears to be over. But this is something you'd expect either from Soviet history or a farcical passage in a Faulkner novel. And let's not forget the context. Huckabee starts the day with a blowout win in Kansas. That evening he gets the largest number of votes in Louisiana. Then in the third contest he's neck and neck with John McCain and looks like he may win all three contests of the day -- a shut-out for the all-but-declared nominee. Then as it's going down to the wire, the head of the state party decides he's seen enough and calls it for McCain.

[A]s we watched the rate of the reporting slow to halt on Saturday evening, we joked amongst ourselves that with McCain already getting beaten by Huckabee twice that day maybe the organizers of the election figured that if they just held out long enough people would just forget they'd held a caucus. But as it got later and later we started to wonder if it wasn't a joke.

I still find it pretty hard to imagine [they] would try something quite this brazen. And it may well be an electoral tempest in a teapot. But this one looks and quacks like a duck. So someone should give it a much closer look.

Late Update: 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.

Before the hang up, Huckabee also asked Esser about the DIY statistical analysis he did to conclude that he should call the race (Esser's expertise in statistics apparently stems from previous work as a state prosecutor and a sports writer). Was there an analysis of what precincts the remaining votes came from? According to Huck campaign manager Ed Rollins, Esser admitted that he didn't know which precincts the remaining votes came from.

Flaja,

I think it has a lot more to do with the person who made the decision to make the early call trying to keep from looking like a horse's rear end than it does with anything sinister from McCain.

http://www.moreperfect.org/wiki/index.php?title=Blog_Perfect

Talk about your slimy politics. Why would voters put up with this? How can it be possible that one candidate gets the most votes in a precinct caucus, but another can get the most delegates?

They Report their delegates this way:

McCain: 192
Huckabee: 186
Romney: 143
Paul: 142
Uncommitted: 51

What The Washington GOP Precinct Caucus Results Mean
Nothing.

People from all over the media, from Josh Marshall to Tim Russert, and Mike Huckabee, are talking about the party declaring a winner, whether it was too soon, and so on. But what the party said about the results literally means nothing at all.

This is clear if you understand the process. The results were released just so that the party could make some news. They have no meaning.

The first thing to understand is that people do not always vote by presidential preference. In my caucus, and in many others in my pooled caucus, presidential preference never even came up. Only two people wanted the two delegate spots, so we nominated them and elected them.

At the precinct caucus next to ours, there were far more participants than delegates, but a similar story: they all knew each other and just said, "well, who wants to go?," and they picked two to nominate and that was it. Presidential preference never even entered into the equation.

Other caucuses were different: a few active Republicans at a precinct caucus a few tables away didn't get elected, because they were outnumbered by Huckabee supporters.

So to portray this as an election for presidential candidates is a complete misunderstanding, worsened by the fact that your stated presidential preference isn't even binding. You could have written down "McCain" on the sign-in sheet (the only record we have) and then changed your mind and said "Romney" in the caucus, and you'd be marked down for McCain.

Or you could have stuck with McCain, but then changed your mind before the county convention. And that's assuming you even GO to county convention: many people won't bother, they are just delegates because no one else wanted to do it. And at county convention, we will split up into legislative districts, and for all we know, McCain supporters could all be from a handful of legislative districts, and then be totally outnumbered at state convention.

For Huckabee to be talking about legal challenges to a completely meaningless result shows that either he has no idea what the results actually mean (nothing), or he is just doing this for show.

The letter by Huckabee campaign chairman Ed Rollins to the Washington State Republican Party, of 11 February:

"Society is composed of two classes;
those who have more dinners than appetites,
and those who have more appetite than dinners."
Nicholas Chamfort( A Frech writer)

By the way, do they teach math in the state of Washington, or do they teach people how to count? I think we need education reform.

I don't know about you but I happen to know alot of people without college degrees that are pretty smart, at least they know how to count.