[Fox News: pic and content]
Results were coming in regular and then they stopped? Doesn’t sound right especially when the results were as close as they were. I have yet to find an explanation.
Mike Huckabee is challenging the results of the Washington state Republican caucuses, his campaign announced Sunday, after accusing the state party chairman of calling the election for John McCain before all the votes were counted.
The campaign will be pursuing a full investigation, including sending in lawyers to join those already on the scene in the state, officials told FOX News.
Washington State Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser announced late Saturday that McCain had won the 2008 Republican caucuses in the state with 87.2 percent of precincts reporting. McCain had 25.5 percent over Huckabee’s 23.7 percent in that race.
Even non-Huckabee fans are a bit leary of such activity.
[Stop the ACLU] As you know, John McCain lost two of the three contests yesterday. He was losing narrowly in Washington state and then pulled ahead by a narrow margin (less than two points) toward the end. But then with 87% of the returns counted, the Washington state GOP, which runs the caucuses stopped releasing results. That left us and a lot of other news organizations in a bit of a quandary last night since it looked like McCain was going to pull it off. But as late as 1:30 AM on the east coast promised new results kept failing to materialize.
Then over night the Washington state GOP put out a press release announcing McCain the winner based on the 87% returns. Now, I think it would be borderline for a media organization to declare one candidate a winner when the margin separating first and second was 1.8% with 13% of the results still uncounted. But for the officials holding the election to declare the result on that basis is simply bizarre. But that’s what they did.
Via the Huckabee website:
The Washington State GOP, with 87.2 percent reporting, discontinued the counting process. We are looking into the matter. We are committed to making certain EVERY vote is counted.
As for what it means for McCain if we were to give him the benefit of the doubt on winning? I agree with this lefty.
No tags for this post.You’d think just days after McCain’s Super Duper Tuesday victories, the GOP’s putative nominee might be able to secure a tad more than a quarter of the vote in what is, let’s face it, not exactly hillbilly territory, yet he barely even managed to edge out rapture-ready Mike Huckabee. But that’s not the worst of it. 16.5% of WA Republicans caucused for Mitt Romney despite having dropped out of the race, while 21% went for Ron Paul despite, well, him being Ron Paul. And 12.7% of Republican caucus goers — some of the party’s most dedicated and active members — proved so disaffected that they pledged “uncommitted”.
