Put this one in the STOLEN ELECTION category. "Every vote counts" means we will keep counting and manufacturing votes until we win. I hope the WA Republicans sue for a completely new election.
They cheated and stole this one, but we will win again and even by more votes, because people are tired of this kind of Election fraud.
Democrats are Lying cheaters.
How many GOP wins are termed "delicious" by the press?
Stalin said something about counting all the votes, valid and invalid and an actor in Key Largo the movie said the same thing. You keep counting until you win. TAKE A LOOK AT FLORIDA. They are using Al Gore's playbook on how to steal an election and the Washington Supremes are happy to allow rejected ballots in. It makes me sick.
SEATTLE, Dec. 22 - After a bitter and protracted recount fight in the Washington governor's race, elections officials announced Wednesday that the Democratic candidate, Christine O. Gregoire, was leading her Republican opponent by 10 votes - a minuscule margin but a stunning reversal of the Nov. 2 election results.
The preliminary results elated Democratic Party officials and came only hours after the party scored another victory, when the State Supreme Court agreed with the Democrats' contention that more than 700 newly discovered and erroneously disqualified ballots in heavily Democratic King County should now be considered.
Since those ballots came from a county where Ms. Gregoire, 57, already had a solid lead, the ruling could allow her to increase her extraordinarily tiny edge in a race that is the closest in state history and one of the closest in the nation's history.
The day's events dealt a serious blow to state Republicans and Dino Rossi, 45, a businessman and former state senator, who had been certified the winner of the Nov. 2 vote after eking out a margin of 261 votes out of almost three million cast. He later won a machine recount by 42 votes.
Official results from the manual recount will not be announced until Thursday, after King County, which includes Seattle, reviews up to 735 disputed ballots. Republicans, who fought hard to keep those ballots out of the tally, were already vowing Wednesday to press election officials to consider several hundred other disqualified ballots cast in other counties.
Whatever the final results, they are almost certain to be contested.
"This count, this election, is not over," said Chris Vance, the chairman of the state Republican Party. The Supreme Court, he said, "basically threw the door open to start all over again. I think that's crazy."
He said Republicans planned to "show up at 9 a.m." on Thursday "on the doorstep of every county auditor with people whose votes weren't counted for Dino Rossi."
But the Democrats, who have waged an all-out war for their candidate in a state known more for politeness in politics than for the kind of partisan brawling that has dominated this contest, said they were confident that the recount had changed the outcome of a statewide election for the first time in state history.
"We are confident that she has been elected governor," said Paul Berendt, chairman of the state Democratic Party, who has encouraged Mr. Rossi to concede.
At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Ms. Gregoire, looking upbeat for the first time since before the election, said she was not personally asking Mr. Rossi to concede. "I leave the decision about conceding to Mr. Rossi," she said.
Ms. Gregoire, the state attorney general, steered clear of proclaiming victory. "It is too early to declare victory; although we are ahead right now, there are still hundreds of votes left to be counted," she said.
Mr. Rossi did not comment on Wednesday, but a spokeswoman, Mary Lane, said, "Knowing how King County operates, it really is not over until the fat lady sings."
Under state law, if a second recount reverses the outcome of an election, the cost - in this case $730,000 - is then covered by the state. But the Democrats had raised almost $2 million from across the country to finance the effort, with help from Senator John Kerry and Howard Dean.
And in an election year that delivered Democrats so many bruising losses, the potential fall and rise of a Democrat in Washington would be a deliciously hard-won aberration.
Such an outcome would also be a personal victory for Mr. Berendt, the state party chairman.
For the last few weeks, he has begun each morning with hard-charging confrontations on a 6 a.m. talk radio show with Mr. Vance, the Republican chairman, whom he described as a "friend" before the election.
"It's time for Democrats somewhere to draw a line in the sand and say we are not going to let bully Republican tactics determine who our governor is or how an election is going to be determined," he said.