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02/13/2005: "Breaking News in S J County of State Wide Importance"

Tom McCabe, Executive VP of BIAW, at Friday Harbor Lunch Meeting

As a result of research by the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW), the outcome of the governor's race could be changed.

The BIAW is a part of one of the largest building industry associations in the nation, has an Orcas based branch that recently embarked on a drive to expand to the other islands, hoping to have an increased voice in the government decisions that effect construction related businesses in SJ county.

As a part of this effort, the local Association recently held lunches on both San Juan and Orcas Islands. While the intent of the meeting was to provide general information about the organization and the specific advantages to being a member (see related story on the BUSINESS link at the left of this column) the 30 some participants -which included three past County Commissioners as well as other current and past members of county government- were also told of the Associations ongoing efforts to insure the recent state governor's race was determined by legally submitted votes. Toward the end of the presentation, the Association's Executive Vice President, Mr. Tom McCabe, was asked to tell the group about research the state Association was engaged in to determine if all of the provisional votes in King County were valid.

Mr. McCabe related the now well-known story of how a King County Judge granted the Democratic Party 48 hours to go out in the community over the weekend and acquire signatures on a large number of provisional ballots that had not been signed at the time the absentee ballots had been sent in. On the following Monday morning some 400 signed provisional ballots were turned in which, in effect, also turned the election.


Mr. McCabe stated that when he started looking through copies of the newly signed affidavits for the provisional ballots he found that the signatures on some of the provisional ballots did not match the signatures of the voters. At this point the Association became concerned enough to run the names of all of the 400 voters through a data base of known felons, and found that some of the voters were not only felons, which means their votes should not have been counted, but even the signatures on the ballots did not match the signatures on their prison booking records. Hundreds of votes by felons were discovered and at that point the research was expanded to include all of the ballots that were part of the 48 hour weekend search by the Democratic party.

The creative way that the Association came up with to obtain the true signatures of those new voters to compare to the signatures that were turned in on the affidavits could be the stuff of a movie or a book. Mr. McCabe showed the meeting participants a copy of a "survey" the Association had sent out along with a check for $10.00 to the addresses of the questionable voters asking them, for the fee, to fill out and -yes you guessed it- sign and return the survey. This then gave the Association a true signature to compare against the "signatures" on the ballots and the affidavits.

At this point, it would appear that if the invalid votes are thrown out, so will the validity of the governor's race. Mr. McCabe stated he did not know where this may end up, or what the outcome may be, but it has the potential of calling in to question the true outcome of the recent election for the governorship.