Heard Chris Vance on Carlson's show on our way to finish up last minute Christmas shopping tonight. He is going to ask that every previously rejected ballot be canvased from every county in the state. If every rejected ballot was canvassed in King County, every previously rejected ballot in all counties should be reviewed. After all, like the dems say, "every vote should count."
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Hand recount in Wash. governor's race shows 10-vote lead
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
OLYMPIA, Wash. -- More than seven weeks after the election, Democrat Christine Gregoire took the lead in Washington's governor's race yesterday, gaining a 10-vote advantage over Republican Dino Rossi after King County officials announced results of a hand recount.
Gregoire, the loser by increasingly slim margins in the first two counts, could claim an even wider margin of victory thanks to a state Supreme Court decision yesterday that requires more than 700 belatedly discovered King County ballots to be counted.
King County, a Democratic stronghold and the last county to finish counting ballots, is expected to certify its results today, but it appeared the courts ultimately will have to decide who won.
Republicans vowed to seek out Rossi voters whose ballots were disqualified and said they will fight to have those votes counted.
"This battle is not over," State GOP Chairman Chris Vance said. "This election is not over."
The ruling and the recount results were explosive twists in the roller-coaster race, which was supposed to have been settled Nov. 2.
Gregoire, 57, a three-term attorney general, was the favorite going into the election against Rossi, 45, a real estate agent and former state senator.
But out of 2.9 million ballots cast on Election Day, Rossi won by 261 votes over Gregoire. His lead was whittled to 42 votes in a subsequent machine recount. Democrats paid $730,000 for the hand recount, though by law the state has to repay the party if the recount reverses the results.
"There is a sacred American right to have legitimate votes counted," Gregoire said in a news release after the ruling. "The justices recognized that principle today."
At a hearing yesterday morning before the high court, Republicans had argued that a recount should be a mere retabulation, and that it was too late for counties to go back and correct errors.
But the court unanimously said state law and previous court rulings specifically allow county canvassing boards to correct mistakes during a recount.
Justices questioned Republican claims that counting the votes would cause irreparable harm.
"You're looking at it from the point of view of the winner or the loser -- shouldn't we be looking at it from the point of view of the voter?" asked Justice Susan Owens.
Democratic State Party Chairman Paul Berendt called on Republicans Tuesday to concede, "for the good of the state."
Republicans refused.
"I don't think anyone will view Christine Gregoire as the legitimate governor" if she wins by a tiny margin in King County or because of the Supreme Court ruling, Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane said yesterday before the court ruling was handed down.
Lane said Republicans will seek out Rossi voters whose ballots were disqualified because of election workers' errors and ask canvassing boards to review them.
During the hand recount, workers in King County, which includes Seattle, found 573 ballots that elections officials say were mistakenly rejected because of a problem with how the voters' signatures had been scanned into the computer system. Workers then searched a warehouse and found 150 more overlooked ballots from voters with last names beginning with A, B and C.
Vance called their discovery weeks after the election "very suspicious." And some Washington state residents who had calmly been watching the recount with confidence in their state's reputation for clean politics were starting to have their doubts.
Up until yesterday, the 723 King County ballots had not been included in the hand recount, because a lower-court judge granted a Republican request to temporarily block the counting of those votes.
If the legal fighting does not produce a new governor by the scheduled Jan. 12 inauguration, lame-duck Gov. Gary Locke, a Democrat, may have to stick around. That is because of a provision of the state constitution that says the governor's term of office is four years "and until his successor is elected and qualified."
Locke has made it clear he is not interesting in hanging around.
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