There are two possible explanations for what happened at the Washington State Caucuses on Saturday night.

1. GOP Washington state officials are a bunch of idiotic boobs who didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

2. A conspiracy was afoot to give the Caucuses to John McCain no matter what the final tally said.

I tend to discount #2 for the simple reason that anyone who reads the explanation of why the party stopped counting with 13% of the vote left and John McCain up by only 200 votes would realize instantly that these guys have the brains of a marmoset and therefore incapable of carrying out any plot more sophisticated than that which could be planned by an 8 year old:

Now, when we were watching this last night and I was trying to examine the tea leaves this morning, I was assuming they’d come forward with some story that there was some hang up with the votes or some mechanical issue. Whether it would be true is another matter. But you’d think they’d at least come up with a good story.

But state party chair Luke Esser said that he just thought it was the right thing to do. According to Esser, sometime overnight Esser did some sort of back of the envelope statistical analysis of the the margin of McCain’s lead (1.8%) and the number votes left uncounted (13%) and decided that Huckabee didn’t have a chance and he’d shut the thing down and declare McCain the winner.

So was that a good idea? Here’s Esser’s rationale …

“Maybe it would have been safer if I hadn’t said anything. But it was an exciting and historic day for the state and I thought if I was confident about what the outcome would be I should share that with the people who had gone out to their caucuses.”

So it was just such a rollicking good time Esser figured he owed the participants a decision as long as he was confident what the outcome would be.

I’m really not sure I’ve ever heard anything that ridiculous.

Neither have I. Until I read how Esser calculated his “back of the envelope statistical analysis” of why Huckabee couldn’t catch up despite being so close and with so many caucus sites uncounted:

Esser said their last county report on Saturday came shortly before 10:15 p.m., at which point they had 87.2 percent of precincts reporting. That’s when they did an analysis, saying: “Let’s take every county where Huckabee is beating McCain, and double the margin of victory,” Esser said. “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.

“That’s when we said we’re confident that Sen. McCain’s lead was going to hold up,” Esser said. “I would have done the same for Gov. Huckabee if he had the same margin and the same underlying dynamics as Sen. McCain.”

Remarkable stupidity. Only someone with no clue about statistics could have come up with such an unscientific “formula” and determine the outcome of such a close race. And only someone oblivious to their own ignorance would have the sheer audacity to announce the “results” and try to pass them off as official.

To make matters even worse, Esser decided to hunker down and try and weather the storm by crawling under the bedcovers and pretending to be asleep – just like any 8 year old caught doing something dumb:

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.

See what I mean about him being too stupid to concoct a conspiracy favoring McCain or anyone else?

Now, what might be plausible is that some McCain operative whispered in his ear on Saturday night and made his case using the faulty analysis Esser relied on to call the race. And now that the crap has hit the fan, he is unwilling to finger the McCain campaign – for obvious reasons. First, it would make him look like a dupe. Second, it could very well severely damage McCain’s candidacy to have it revealed his campaign was trying to monkey with the vote count.

But I think that a long shot at best. Esser probably really thought he was doing us all a favor by announcing the results before everything was tabulated. And it’s that kind of breathtaking stupidity that makes me believe that Esser would probably not have conspired with the McCain camp but simply made his doltish decisions alone.