Over on
my diary, I've had a series of articles on the Washington State Caucuses. This is my summary and conclusion.
During the night of the WA Caucuses, I was following the partial precinct returns as they were being reported, and I noticed some odd growth in the delegate count. I took several screenshots, and they raised enough questions that I wanted to find out more about how the process worked. I posted the notes in this article, which I've since revised as I've found out more information (a revision history is available).
While looking it up, I came across a complaint by a Danny Burns, who claimed to witness precinct delegates being counted inaccurately by a county clerk. I got in contact with him to keep up with the status of his efforts to get that resolved, and to find out if there was anything more to it.
Finally, I had questions about the seemingly high number of abandoned Delegates; delegates that were not awarded to any candidate even after 99% of the precincts were awarded.
Delegate Growth
Delegate numbers being revised downward after being reported by the press can be reason for further explanation. In 2000, a downward revision in Gore's numbers in one county led to discoveries of flaws in vote-counting machines.
So far, all explanation for odd delegate growth has been passed off as being due to the chaos of vote-counting night, and that revisions are common.
Jaxon Raven of the state Democratic Party was asked about the odd delegate growth and he said:
The state party released its information about the precinct caucuses at an event on Saturday afternoon February 7th at the Aerospace Machinists Hall. There was one AP reporter in the state party offices when the information first arrived. She was compiling her own information about the returns and may have been reporting results before they were released. In addition news agencies may have done their own independent polling and made their estimates based on these numbers. They may also have been reporting the results at different times.
I personally still think it is odd to have seen significant downward revision of Kucinich's delegates, and also a period of time where there was significant growth for every candidate except for Kucinich while several hundred precincts worth of results came in. But I also was not able to find out the details of what errors were corrected, what partial result sets were released, etc. In general though, I believe that numbers that are significantly revised after being released to the press are fair game and should be investigated.
Irregularities In Caucuses
While my own research has not been widely reported, I did have between five and ten people email me with reports of irregularities during the caucuses. Due to the nature of my audience being mostly Dean supporters, these reports might not be representative of the whole. These allegations include:
- Kerry staffers giving other voters the wrong address to precinct locations
- Danny Burns' complaint of a clerks writing the wrong number of delegates down
- Another complaint of an undecided delegate being given to Kerry after the undecided voters had left while Dean had the most delegates
- Precinct officers refusing to record objections in minutes
- People not being allowed to vote if they arrived late but still before 10:30.
Irregularities Recording Numbers
The 36th District has attracted significant attention due to the complaints of Danny Burns. He witnessed a data entry clerk record the delegate numbers for his precinct inaccurately.
After the precincts at the 36th District were completed, the results were gathered and typed in for the district. This data entry work was projected on a wall so it could be witnessed. There were errors made and later caught, along the lines of numbers being recorded on the wrong line, etc.
The intent of the recording process was to report the preliminary results of the first count to the state, for the benefit of the press, who was anxious for trend and turnout numbers. Then they would recount the numbers over the next two days and report the final results.
The numbers were recorded, but I received one report that the decision was made not to examine the minutes of every precinct to make sure that each precinct's numbers were recorded accurately. Instead, each precinct's final reported results was checked against the district results.
After the first recount, Dean's percentage reportedly went down a small amount.
The spreadsheet for the 36th district, where you can examine how many delegate were awarded for each precinct, was briefly available online, but now appears to be gone.
Abandoned Delegates
The currently reported results show 99% precincts have reported. However, out of about 27k delegates, about 3400 are unaccounted for, or 13%. This is even aside from the 800 "Undecided" delegates. Precincts don't have more than 10-15 delegates maximum, so this implies a large number of delegates that were abandoned or missed.
It is possible for delegates to be abandoned. For instance, Danny Burns's grandmother went to her precinct and was the only attendee. There were multiple delegates. She signed up as a delegate for Dean, and the others were abandoned. This is consistent with the rules and not cause for concern.
Also, if a candidate wins delegates but there are not enough voters at that precinct willing to be delegates, that can a problem. However, other Democrats can pledge (ahead of time) to be delegates for a candidate without having to be at a precinct. And, if there are still not enough voters, the delegates are then awarded to the other candidates in the precinct before they are abandoned.
When Jaxon Ravens of the WA State Democratic Party pointed out that 99% of the precincts had been counted, he was told that there were over 3400 abandoned delegates. He reportedly said, "I had no idea." He said that he'd look into it further. I followed up with him about this matter and his response was:
You are correct in your assumption that these delegates were not allocated due to limited attendance in some precinct caucuses. Your suggestion that the web site indicate this is a good one and I will pass it on to the tech department.
I pointed out that 3400 seemed an especially high number, since it would involve several hundred precincts having no attendees, and if he could give more details about what precincts didn't report any delegates. His response:
We are in the process of going through the materials from the
caucuses and are not at a point yet where we can pinpoint exactly where
precincts did not award their full allotment of delegates. This
information should be available in the next couple of weeks.
Per-precinct results
While the 36th district recounted the results reported from their precinct, they did not make a significant effort in verifying that each precinct recorded their results accurately. They did briefly publicly report the number of delegates that each precinct awarded, but that information appears to be gone now.
Reporting per-precinct results is not being done on a statewide level, and most districts and counties will not be reporting these numbers.
This is a potential concern because it makes it impossible for voters to verify that the numbers they remember from their precinct was recorded accurately.
I asked the State Party about this:
Are there plans to make available the full results of how many delegates each precinct awarded for each candidate? I've already noticed that King County has started putting up web links to Excel Documents showing the results to enable caucusgoers to verify the results for their own precincts. Will this be happening statewide?
They responded:
No. Results will be displayed by legislative district, county and congressional district.
I wrote back:
There are many people that are not sure if they should be concerned
about how their precinct was handled, because they can't confirm that
the voting they witnessed is what was reported to the state. If the
per-precinct information won't be reported on websites, then what are
the numbers they can call to verify that the state-recorded results
match up to what they witnessed at the precinct? If they could verify
this, then they would know that they wouldn't have to write a letter of
complaint to the state party. It would be a good way to nip it in the
bud.
And they responded:
If they have any concerns they should send us a letter stating
their precinct and what they thought the delegate allocation should have
been. Will examine these carefully on a case by case basis to see if
there are any discrepancies.
This unfortunately verifies nothing to the voter, and does nothing for the voter that is under the assumption that things are fine and doesn't realize their precinct recorded votes inaccurately. The only way for a voter to be sure that the numbers they witnessed were created accurately is to see their precinct numbers publicly reported
and see how they contributed to the overall public total for the district, by seeing the results in the other precincts.
More theoretically, keeping it private also allows for the possibility of fraud. Bob and Jeff, who don't know each other, are in separate precincts in the same district. The district reports Candidate Frank as receiving 50 delegates. Bob knows that his precinct awarded 40 for Frank. Jeff knows that his precinct awarded 40 for Frank as well. A fraudulent district could tell each of them privately that they are correct, since they wouldn't have to make a document public. Theoretically, any collection of precincts (county, district, or caucus) that doesn't report their pre-precint results publicly to all other precincts has the opportunity for this kind of fraud.
I tried to push back one more time:
The problem is that many voters have reasons (some good, some bad :-) ) to wonder if the vote count was recorded inaccurately. Writing a letter for the state party to do a private examination doesn't verify anything to the voter. If there were a public source, then the voter would know if something is wrong for their precinct before even sending the complaint letter, which would mean less followup for you guys to do. Can you reconsider making the per-precinct numbers available on a statewide level? If not now (I get what you're saying about the numbers not being in a state yet where you can see where the unawarded delegates came from), then at a later time where this is still enough time for voters to contest? If not, can you communicate a reason why this is specifically unallowable? Some places like King County are already doing so.
I waited a few days and received no response.
Results
The state party communicated that final results of the WA count, including details on the abandoned delegates, would be reported on their website at http://wa-democrats.org/ . Their examination is still in process and should be completed in a week or two.
Complaints And Conclusions
The state democratic party has said several times that if anyone has concerns about how their precinct was run, they can complain. From Jaxon Ravens:
If individuals have concerns about the way in which their caucus was conducted they can send a letter to the state party at Washington State Democratic Central Committee, PO Box 4027, Seattle, WA 98104. All letters will be carefully reviewed.
In both this statement and the one about the per-precinct delegate counts, no promise was made to respond to the voter about any complaints.
This is all I have on the issue. I don't personally feel this can be considered resolved - while there have been some efforts made at transparency, there is a lot more they can do to answer questions and set minds at ease. The results that will be made public in a week or two should answer a lot of questions, but they won't do much for those who have reason to doubt their per-precinct results.
Some caveats. While it would be a good idea for the state to release per-precinct results for the entire state, the state probably doesn't exactly have the power to mandate this. They can strongly request it to each of the counties and districts, but may not be able to require it. People who are interested in seeing these numbers should follow up with their district or county. I just found someone yesterday in Seattle who mentioned that their district was one of the ones who made their per-precinct results available - he checked his precinct, and it was wrong.
And finally, while there is plenty of reason to question the accuracy of the delegate count, it is still unrealistic to believe that it would be because of any organized fraud. For one thing, there are district and county conventions coming up. If there were a bunch of delegates awarded at precincts and then not reported to the state, these "phantom" delegates would still show up at the convention and probably make an issue out of it.
There has been a lot of interest in the WA Caucus process. Some people in the media are attempting to keep the pressure on regarding this matter, including Mike Webb, who runs a popular radio show in Seattle - he has devoted airtime to this issue and had some of the complainants on his show.
This pretty much concludes my own part of the project - I've also been reporting about this over at my weblog and will continue to post followups over there if anything in particular comes up. I do recommend that people who might doubt the accuracy of their precinct count should write the WA Democratic Party, though.