Posted on 11/25/2004 9:59:40 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
The election was already achingly close, but the recount in the race for governor of Washington State was almost absurdly close, the results showed Wednesday. Former State Senator Dino Rossi, the Republican who was declared the winner last week by 261 votes, won the recount by a mere 42, of almost three million cast.
And the bizarre contest is anything but settled. Democrats said the vote - 48.8717 percent to 48.8702 percent, as recounted by machine - was far too close for their candidate, State Attorney General Christine Gregoire, to concede. They said they would request a third count, this one by hand, possibly featuring the inspection of, yes, chads.
Ms. Gregoire said Wednesday evening that her party was challenging specific results in several counties, but she declined to say whether the recount, which the party is guaranteed under state law, would be held in only some counties or in all of the state's 39. The Democrats have a week to decide.
"Well, the race continues," she said at a news conference in Seattle. "It's a 42-vote difference. My friends, it is a tied race. Some folks have suggested we ought to flip a coin or stage a duel with Senator Rossi. My personal preference is we ought to recount every single vote."
Mr. Rossi, a commercial real estate agent, was on vacation but issued a statement saying, "This process has lasted a lot longer than anyone thought it would, but I'm grateful that the people of Washington have placed their trust in me."
The election has been by far the closest in the history of this state, which has various types of voting systems, including punch cards and optical scanners.
"I've been in the election business for 33 years, and I'm astonished," Secretary of State Sam Reed, an elected Republican, said Wednesday afternoon at a news conference in Olympia, the state capital. "When they gave me these results, I must admit I was stunned. We are talking about such a small percentage of difference that it is almost unbelievable."
Bitter feuding between the two parties, which had already sparred in court over the vote count here in heavily Democratic King County, was renewed only seconds after the final results of the five-day recount came in Wednesday afternoon. Democrats maintained that the voting machines were fallible. Republicans accused the Democrats of plotting to cherry-pick, suggesting that they would seek a hand recount only in Democratic-leaning counties.
"The most important thing is that people have confidence that their governor was elected and was credibly elected," said Kirstin Brost, a Democratic spokeswoman. "People have to have confidence in the process. If we were talking about a difference of 5,000 votes it would be a very different story, but we are talking about a difference that is less than one one-hundredth of 1 percent."
Several members of Mr. Rossi's transition team held a news conference outside his campaign headquarters in Bellevue, east of Seattle.
"The votes have been counted twice," said one team member, Kathy Lambert, a King County councilwoman. "We know very clearly who won."
J. Vander Stoep, Mr. Rossi's transition chief of staff, said, "A lot of lawyers are either buying plane tickets or they are here already, on both sides."
"That's Christine Gregoire's choice," he added, "whether to unleash that and turn this into Florida the Second, or whether to say two counts is enough."
Mr. Rossi's 261-vote victory last week, coming two weeks after Election Day and delayed by the counting of hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots, automatically brought a machine recount under Washington's election laws. Any political party can then request a further count, by machine or hand, but the party must shoulder the cost. That cost would be some $700,000 if the Democrats demanded that the new recount take place in all 39 counties.
If that recount, even if held in only one county, were to change the outcome of the election, making Ms. Gregoire the winner, then Secretary of State Reed would be required to order another, final, statewide count, this one by hand since that was what the Democrats demanded Wednesday for the second recount. The cost of the final count would be paid by the state, Mr. Reed said Wednesday.
The next count could last weeks, even though Mr. Reed said he and the current governor, Gary Locke, a Democrat who decided not to run again, would certify Mr. Rossi as the governor-elect on Tuesday. The parties have until three days after the certification to request a recount.
The results of both the initial count and the recount were stunners, because Ms. Gregoire had been expected to win easily. The state's voters here had not sent a Republican to the governor's mansion since 1980.
OH how I really really hate these people.
That needs to change. Either partial recounts need to be outlawed completely, or any full recount necessitated by a partial recount must be paid for by the party which requested the partial recount.
Maybe the third count will finally allow the democrats to steal it. They're not going to give up that bureaucracy easily. And after all, if it's close, the democrat always gets to win, especially in a blue state, right?
The re-re-count will provide a good opporunity for the Dems to cheat. One re-count should be enough.
Frankly, I'm amazed that they haven't succeeded in finding or spoiling more ballots and haven't stolen it already. The Republicans must be watching them very, very closely indeed.
Forty-two votes is forty-two votes. That's not a tie! She wants recounts until she gets the desired result? Any way to put a stop to this?
Not likely.
you're right. I think the Repubs are watching very very closely. I don't think the dems will succeed in pulling this out.
Develop a vaccine for Liberalism.
The W.H. sent over some of the same lawyers they used in Florida, I suspect this put a kink in their ability to steal the election even with judges doing their best to hand it to the Dems. No guarentee they won't manage to steal it yet, but I find some comfort in the legal team assigned by the RNC.
I tend to agree.
just keep counting until you get the result you want, senor democrats
i heard a radio report that says that selective hand recounts are legal there, that the Dems could request them only in certain counties. I cannot see how this could hold up, this was the key equal protection issue in Bush v Gore 2000. Either hand recount the whole state, or it ends here. But let's see what Dems judges they will shop this too to make it happen.
Here's throwing tomatoes at the Democratic party for seeking to prolong this mess after two recounts.
While the selective recount would be paid by the Democratic Party, the whole-state recount would be paid by the taxpayers.
Come January, both houses of the legislature will be controlled by the Democrats.
I'd like to THANK those lawyers who are working on behalf of Governor-elect Rossi.
It's really disgusting how the dems scrounge for votes like a drug-addled whore would scrounge for crack.
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