Snohomish County learned Tuesday that it can recount nearly 100,000 votes cast on touch-screen machines without having to print a hard copy of each ballot.
The deal will save the county time and money as it joins Washington’s other 38 counties today in the state’s first hand recount of a governor’s race.
“This negates the need to print out 96,231 ballots,” Snohomish County Auditor Bob Terwilliger said of the deal reached with the Secretary of State’s Office and the Republican and Democratic parties.
County election officials had predicted they would need 20 cases of paper to create hard-copy ballots of those votes. Instead, the state and the parties agreed that Snohomish County will provide the tape of vote results generated by each of the 937 devices used Election Day and compare those numbers with total results from the machine recount.
Yakima County, the only other county that uses electronic voting machines, will follow the same procedure for the 16,869 votes cast at its polls.
This is one of the wrinkles ironed out before nearly 2.9 million ballots are tabulated for a third time to determine if Republican Dino Rossi or Demo-crat Christine Gregoire will be the next governor.
The two battled to a virtual tie on Election Day, with Rossi ahead by 261 votes. He was certified the winner after he finished with a 42-vote edge following a machine recount. The Democratic Party requested the manual recount, which Secretary of State Sam Reed hopes will conclude by Dec. 23.
Democratic Party lawyers also sued in state Supreme Court, arguing that votes rejected by canvassing boards should be reconsidered in several counties, including King County, where Gregoire won by a wide margin. They also argued that party-designated observers need to be near enough to the recounting process to raise objections.
Tuesday brought sharply worded replies from lawyers for Reed, four counties named in the suit and the state Republican Party, which hopes to intervene. In separate filings, attorneys for each argued that state law lays out the rules for recounts, sets the guidelines for observers and makes clear that decisions by canvassing boards cannot be revisited.
The state Supreme Court could hear the case as early as today.
In the meantime, at 8:15 this morning, the Snohomish County Auditor’s Office planned to begin taking inventory of its ballots to verify that they have in hand all 200,737 mail-in ballots and the result tapes for each of the voting machines.
Terwilliger hopes to start recounting early next week and finish Dec. 22. The procedure is taking place at 1818 Pacific Ave. and is open to the public.
Republican John Zambrano, a Mountlake Terrace City Council member, and Democrat Barbara Tunestan of Everett will oversee the counting center. The two were designated by their respective parties, then hired by the county.
Snohomish County has a long history of enlisting representatives of each party to help supervise vote counting in elections as a means of reassuring the public of the integrity of the undertaking, Terwilliger said.
“They sign an oath that is an allegiance to the ballot counting process,” he said.
Zambrano said he and those who will be doing the work will set aside their partisan interests to carry out the task at hand. “We take pride in the fact that we represent the voter,” said the Navy veteran and retired postal worker.
“I’m here with really good Americans, and they can put their ideology aside to accomplish this noble cause to ensure that the voter’s intent is carried out,” he said.
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