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Something Odd Brewing in the Land of Starbucks?

February 11, 2008 9:05 AM

What the heck is going on with the Washington State Republican Caucuses?

With 87.2 percent of returns reporting, the state GOP chairman Luke Esser called it a win for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz..

But it was very close. Only 242 votes at that point, between McCain and Huckabee, according to Huckabee campaign chairman Ed Rollins, who seemed to think the GOP establishment was trying to sideline Huckabee.

“The Huckabee campaign is deeply disturbed by the obvious irregularities in the Washington State Republican precinct caucuses," Rollins said in a statement. "That is an outrage...more than one in eight Evergreen State Republicans have been disenfranchised by the actions of their own party."

Sunday morning, Esser said with 93% of the vote counted, showed that McCain had 25.4 percent to Mike Huckabee's 23.8 percent.

“There's no certainty in this mortal coil," Esser said, "But I am confident these numbers will hold up.”

Esser added that he doesn't "blame anybody for strongly supporting their guy and Governor Huckabee is a great guy. If they're mad at me, I'm sorry. But I would have done the exact same thing if Governor Huckabee had the same lead, and the same number of votes were outstanding.”

According to the Seattle Times, "Esser said he declared McCain the winner after calculating what Huckabee would have to win in the remaining precincts in order to take the lead. And even with being generous with a forecast of Huckabee votes, and purposefully assuming McCain's support dropped significantly in the late counts, McCain still looked like the winner."

Fair or foul?

- jpt

UPDATE: ABC News' Kevin "Chupkabee" Chupka writes that in Richmond, Va., just now, Huckabee said, "We were neck and neck within 200 votes in Washington state. Then something just amazing happened around 10:50 Saturday night:

"The party chairman, with 200 votes separating us and only 87 percent of the votes coming in -- 13 percent not even yet counted -- said, 'Lets just quit counting the votes I'm just gonna personally declate John McCain the winner. Congratulations!'

"I thought, 'Excuse me?' I was even more emphatic than that. I have never heard of something so outrageous in my life . So were looking into every option that we might have and seeing exactly what's going on but we want a full accounting that could lead a party chairman to suddenly preempt the votes and disenfranchise over 13 percent of the people, whose votes apparently aren't worth enough to be counted.

"Folks, this is America and the last time I checked, you don't have an elections so that a party chairman could preempt the people's vote."

February 11, 2008 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (22)

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Oh, come on, cut that GOP local chairman some slack, people... For years he's told to frame the vote, put up caging lists, depress turnout and voter numbers, and now all of a sudden he's supposed to let a vote run until 100% of votes are counted?

He's too used to lying & cheating now to differentiate people

Posted by: Kaj | Feb 11, 2008 9:42:40 AM

Definitely foul. Every vote needs to be counted. Additionally, why was Mitt Romney's name in as someone votes were being cast for? That is clearly tampering with the results. He dropped out. He should not have been a choice - period. These results need to be tossed out and redone with only the candidates that are still in the running.

Posted by: Jan Broucinek | Feb 11, 2008 9:23:52 AM

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