http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/12/22/...rnor/index.html

Washington hand count could favor Democrat
Court orders disputed ballots counted in race for governor

Wednesday, December 22, 2004 Posted: 9:55 PM EST (0255 GMT)

(CNN) -- Unofficial results from a manual recount of ballots in King County have tilted the result of the unsettled Washington governor's race for the first time to Democrat Christine Gregoire.

Republican governor-elect Dino Rossi now faces the prospect of losing a race he led after two previous ballot counts.

In King, the state's largest county, Gregoire picked up 47 votes in the manual recount, while Rossi lost 12, giving her a net gain of 59 votes, according to results released Wednesday afternoon. Rossi had led the race by 49 votes after the recount was completed in the state's other 38 counties.

That puts Gregoire's margin of victory at 10 votes, out of nearly 2.9 million cast.

However, the margin may change because of a decision earlier Wednesday by the state Supreme Court.

The high court decided that King County could also consider in its count more than 700 absentee ballots that local election officials said had been mistakenly excluded from earlier counts because of a computer error.

King County, which includes Seattle, is a Democratic stronghold where Gregoire won 58 percent of the vote to Rossi's 40 percent.

King County will not officially certify its recount results until Thursday, pending tabulation of the additional absentee ballots, and Gregoire said Wednesday evening that it was "too early to declare victory."

"Although we're ahead right now, there are still hundreds of votes left to be counted in King County," she said. "Once King County is able to fix their mistake, count the votes and certify the results, we will know who the next governor of the state of Washington really is."

Rossi, a 44-year-old former state senator from suburban Seattle, led by 261 votes after the initial count, a margin small enough to trigger an automatic statewide machine recount. After the second tabulation, he led by 42 votes, and Secretary of State Sam Reed certified him as governor-elect.

But 57-year-old Gregoire, a three-term state attorney general, refused to concede, and the state Democratic Party put up a $730,000 deposit to pay for a statewide hand recount. If the final result makes Gregoire the victor, the Democrats will get their money back, and the state will pay for the recount.

State law does not provide for any additional recounts. But Rossi and the Republicans could go to court to formally contest the election, elongating a political impasse that has stretched on for more than seven weeks.

"It's certainly too close to call and Dino is not conceding," Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane told The Associated Press. "This election is not over."

A new governor is scheduled to be inaugurated in just three weeks, on January 12.
Court battles

The absentee ballots at the center of Wednesday's Supreme Court decision originally were rejected because the signatures on the ballots did not match the voter registration signatures in King County's computer system.

But Dean Logan, the county's election director, said the ballots were excluded by mistake because the voter registration signatures were never entered into the computer system.

The county canvass board voted 2-1 to re-canvass the ballots by checking the signatures on the ballots against original voter registration documents and counting those where the signatures matched.

Last Friday, a judge in Tacoma issued a restraining order preventing King County from counting the disputed ballots, arguing that an earlier Supreme Court decision mandated that ballots previously excluded could not be reconsidered during recounts.

However, Democrats -- backed up by Reed, a Republican -- argued in court documents that the court's earlier ruling only applied to ballots that had been considered and rejected, not ballots that had been excluded by mistake.

Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court heard arguments from both sides and hours later issued 7-to-0 decision siding with the Democrats and Reed.

Gregoire hailed the court's decision as a "huge success for democracy."

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Shit...it seems every state court gets the meaning of recounts and letting democracy prevail but the USSC is totally lost on the subject! Go figure!

What scares me about Washington race, if it goes on, we all know that somehow the republicans will "FIND" votes even if they don't exist. I'm sure you can see by now, that I do not trust republicans with anything including of course, recounts. If for once democracy does prevail, I believe that Christine Gregoire will be the next governor of Washington. It's bad enough the state south of me, has the gropinator for governor, don't need a republican governor north of me, too. USSC, stay out of this race, dammit.

It'd be interesting to see how Repubs would respond to a successful recoount in Gregorie's favor. They might say something like "Gov. Gregorie stole the election!" And we could just tell them oh, I don't know something along the lines of "Stop Whining! Gregorie won. Deal with it!"

:)

I really want Gregoire to win, no I don't live in Washington, but I would like to see an end to republicans stealing elections and it would be just like them to"whine" if they legitimetly LOSE this one. But it would also give me hope for the future, sending a strong message to republicans, no you cannot rig and steal every damn election you please. Hang in there, GOVERNOR Gregoire, this is yours.