When do politicians take electoral issues seriously?

When their own ballots are affected, naturally! From The Seattle Times: “The King County error came to light Sunday when Larry Phillips, chairman of the Metropolitan King County Council, was looking over a list of voters from his neighborhood whose ballots had been disqualified. Phillips spotted his own name on the list, prompting an investigation by King County elections workers that turned up 561 improperly disqualified ballots.” So Gregoire may still win….

(Via E-Voting News. Their story included a grammatical howler: somebody used the word fluctuant, presumably under the impression that it was an adjectival form of fluctuate. In fact it’s a term from biology, meaning “movable and compressible — used of abnormal body structures (as some abscesses or tumors)”.
UPDATE: The author of the piece assures me that the usage is blessed by the OED, even if it is a little archaic. My apologies: I have no objection to the creative revival of archaic language.)