Mistrust has infected our state, resulting from the thinly veiled corruption within the King County election board.

In contrast, we have courageous military personnel fighting for the right to vote in foreign countries as it exists within the United States. Yet we cannot get an honest vote in King County. Some Democrats and the Supreme Court of the state of Washington looked the other way, created new rules of voter eligibility and failed to understand the impact of such shallow self-serving decisions. Mind you, this all happened under the stewardship of our acting attorney general, Christine Gregoire.

I see a huge conflict of interest here. Those who don’t must be blind or part of the problem.

Examples of corruption include: Allowing enhanced votes to be counted that were damaged or improperly completed. There is a huge difference between enhanced votes in Island County and King County. Island County calls them pink cards, which duplicate the real voter card, with a punched card to replicate the holes of a real vote. An inherently, error-prone human decides the voter’s meaning and enhances the vote to a pink card, which is then labeled with a signature, date and identity for recall. In King County, however, the original is altered with the space blanked out or whited out and is not available for comparative retrieval. This is nearly the perfect crime as retrieval is so difficult. Believe me, a hand recount is far less accurate than a machine recount. Machines don’t care who wins, unlike people.

Searching for voter intent as a concept is an absurd undertaking. Voters have a civic duty to vote clearly, or the vote should be discarded. Washington Administrative Codes (WAC) requires interpretation of pregnant chads by what is left of four corners. Mind you, the same voter card is clearly punched out with precision on many issues and candidates, except when it comes to the governor’s race. This is true for 98 percent of voter cards. Impressions are interpreted for candidates, however, suggesting that the voter was leaning on his pen and reached no decision. A subjective examiner of uncertain motives holds these questionable voter cards to the light and says, “I think this looks like, … well, maybe it has light coming through two corners, therefore it meets the WAC criteria of voter’s intent.”

This is pure nonsense. The proof of voter understanding is how precisely the voter had punched out 20 other holes on the same card and we are now expected to allow observers in King County to draw an observation from an impression of indecision.

In King County, many had no signature on file, a required proof of citizenship and voter registration. You just cannot hire a transient on the street, give him a meal, a post office box address (more than 500 had the same PO Box at the King County elections) and ask him to vote for Gregoire and label it legal. There are 3,500 votes cast in King County that exceed the number of registered voters. It’s no wonder Ms. Gregoire was confident with a hand recount in King County. In contrast, our deployed military did not receive absentee ballots in time to vote. How can you justify coaching a transient to vote democratic while denying defenders of our national security their vote?

Convicted felons and the deceased were discovered as voters in King County. Some college students are reported as voting once in their home address and again at their school address. Newly discovered and unsecured ballots were found on nine occasions.

This election was decided twice by machine and certified in the favor of Governor-elect Rossi. Only since the Washington Supreme Court changed the rules do we have a different governor elect. The Washington Supreme Court needs to be challenged in this decision. In the 2000 Florida presidential vote, the Florida Supreme Court exceeded its charter by changing the rules per the U.S. Supreme Court. “Selected, not elected,” was the dishonest spin of disenchanted democrats. Needless to say, the U.S. Supreme Court was correct. We have seen corruption and incompetence at the core of the King County elections. It is unconscionable for the acting attorney general of the State of Washington to oversee such gutter levels of political deception. As she said, “We want to count every vote until we get it right.”

A Gregoire right is not what is right for the state of Washington. A revote might clearly define a governor elected by legitimate voters, if King County is closely monitored. Otherwise, the attorneys will have a feast at taxpayer’s expense.

Edward Drum lives in Oak Harbor .