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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (213870)	12/23/2004 6:59:09 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1572416

Gregoire has won the governor's race in WA state! Let the games begin! ***************************************************** King Co. final count gives Gregoire 130 vote lead** Republicans plan next legal move 03:46 PM PST on Thursday, December 23, 2004 Associated Press and KING Staff Reports SEATTLE — The canvassing board for King County approved the counting of 566 out of 732 mistakenly rejected ballots in the hand recount of Washington’s incredibly tight governor’s race. The additional ballots went 311 for Democrat Christine Gregoire, 191 for Republican Dino Rossi, 26 for Libertarian Ruth Bennett, two write-ins, 35 over votes and one under vote. Another 148 ballots were rejected by the canvassing board because the county did not have the required voter signatures, or the signatures they had did not match those on the ballots. After losing the first two tallies to Rossi, Gregoire seized a 10-vote lead out of 2.9 million ballots cast statewide when King County reported its unofficial results Wednesday. Earlier that day, the state Supreme Court ruled that King County, the state’s most populous and a Democratic stronghold, could count 700-plus belatedly discovered ballots. Shortly before the canvassing board met, Republicans submitted affidavits to King County elections officials from 91 people who voted for Rossi and believe their ballots were erroneously rejected. The statements said members of the military lost their right to vote when their absentee ballots went uncounted because of signature mis-matches or other problems. Republicans said those votes should be included. "I'm sure they didn't mean they only wanted to count Democrat votes," said Diane Tebelius, GOP attorney before Thursday's canvassing board meeting. "I'm sure that both Paul Berendt and Christine Gregoire meant they wanted to count every vote whether it was a Republican or a Democrat because they truly wanted to find out who was the winner in this election." The canvassing board declined those 91 ballots, saying they were no different to a lot of other votes and absentee ballots that did not come in by the deadline. Republicans have refused to admit defeat, and Gregoire said she would wait until King County becomes the last in the state to certify results of its hand recount. Still, she urged Rossi to abide by the results of the hand recount. “We’ve got huge issues facing the state, and we need to get on with it,” she said Wednesday. “Whoever is governor is going to have a challenge of bringing the state together.” Secretary of State Sam Reed is set to certify the election Dec. 30. Republican officials say they will blanket the state over the next week looking for Rossi voters whose ballots were mistakenly disqualified, and will ask county canvassing boards to reconsider those ballots. Reed, however, has said state law allows such recanvassing only before counties certify their results. No other counties in Washington planned to recanvass ballots from their certified election results. The president of the Washington State Association of County Auditors, Corky Mattingly—the Yakima County auditor—said Thursday auditors statewide have agreed they will not grant any requests to recanvass. She said everyone agreed with Secretary of State Sam Reed’s interpretation of the law—that counties don’t have the legal authority to recanvass after their results have already been certified. Once the election is certified, Republicans may pursue a legal challenge. State law allows any registered voter to challenge election results. 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 Rossi surprised political experts by squeaking out a 261-vote win over Gregoire. His lead was whittled to 42 votes in a subsequent machine recount. Democrats paid $730,000 for the hand recount. By law the state has to repay the party if the recount reverses the results. “We asked for a hand count because we knew machines make mistakes,” said state Democratic Party spokeswoman Kirstin Brost. “We believe that the hand count is the most accurate count and we’re very excited by these results.” continued............ king5.com