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You are correct. The double counting did cause a loss of about 8,000 votes when the error was fixed. The margin between Gregoire and Rossi in Grey's County was small throughout the counts I saw. I did remember that the county went in Rossi's favor on the 12th of November. Then, when the correction was made, Gregoire was ahead.

The real question I must make is the situation in King County where 10,000 votes found in the latter part of the counting. We figured that the 10,000 ballets, if stacked in their original envelopes, would reach a height of 27 feet. Such an unusual error to miss that count estimation. The 59.0% Gregoire advantage held, meant an approximate 1,800 vote advantage for Gregoire. Of course, King County Election officials tell us those votes were there all along... and those same officials see nothing fishy about Baghdad Jim McDermott landing an incredible 80.7% of the vote in the 7th District.

For now, Rossi has a 261 vote lead and our machine recount ought to be complete by Wednesday of next week. Let's see how much that final tally changes and whether King County's apparent 505,243 to 350,779 final tally doesn't swing significantly in favor of Gregoire to magically deliver her the win.

I was also told by two of the observers at the King County counting facility, that the people doing the absentee ballot counting were walled in cubicles. When the observers went up to the partitions to peer over into the cubicle, the Seattle police were called to move the observers away from the counters. The counters said that the observers were too close and it was making it hard for them to do their job. Officials said they insisted on keeping observers at a distance so workers wouldn't be distracted and so observers wouldn't see confidential information such as voters' date of birth. Democrats accused Republican observers of attempting "to skew the election results in King County through harassment and intimidation of elections workers." The Democrats knew they could use the partitions to their advantage by pushing the observers at a far enough distance to perceive any vote tampering.