Washington State Shennanigans Update

Let's review. Huckabee was up in the (non-binding) vote count all night. McCain and Ron Paul were right behind him. Then McCain jumps to a 242 vote lead and the state GOP chairman shuts the counting down with only 87% of the vote counted and declares John McCain the winner. Huckabee demands they finish the count. The state chair tells him they will Monday.......

"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.

-TPM's Josh Marshall

h/t Bradblog

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5678#more-5678

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Of course the real winner is the one who got the most delegates elected for the state convention, not who won this non-binding preference poll, and all indications are that the real winner was neither McCain or Huckabee but rather Ron Paul. Look for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other presstitutes to shove knitting needles deep into their own eye sockets before they admit something like that though. You have to read about it places like this.