Washington G.O.P. makes an ‘Oops’

Washington state’s Republican Party Chairman Luke Esser holds a B.A. in Accounting, but you have got to wonder if the man slept through his statistics courses. He called the state’s Saturday primary for McCain with only 87.2 percent of the vote counted — and it gets worse. With almost 13 percent of the votes uncounted, John McCain had less than a 2 percent lead on Mike Huckabee. I sure as heck wouldn’t be comfortable calling that race without knowing how those last votes were going to fall.

Esser says that they did an analysis that proved that McCain was guaranteed to hold on in an interview with the Seattle Times:

“Let’s take every county where Huckabee is beating McCain, and double the margin of victory. And then take every county where McCain is winning and cut in half that margin of victory. Even if you assume that, Sen. McCain still holds on.”

The only person who doesn’t seem to have spoken out about Esser’s error in judgment is McCain. Huckabee is threatening legal action — as of yesterday, 93 percent of votes had been counted, providing a safer margin of error, but Huckabee’s campaign has made statements to the effect that there were other irregularities.

The voters don’t seem exactly pleased, either, and they shouldn’t be. Esser’s decision may prove a costly mistake, forcing the Republicans to spend time and money in Washington state when they should be moving on to Washington D.C., where the ‘Potomac primaries’ (Maryland, Virginia and D.C.) will be held tomorrow. We may even be seeing legal expenses if Huckabee sticks to his guns.