OLYMPIA – After a day of vote-counting with more suspenseful twists than an Alfred Hitchcock movie, Republican Dino Rossi held a 19-vote lead over Democrat Christine Gregoire Tuesday evening.
It was a good day for Gregoire, however, with a court victory for Democrats in King County and promising news from Grays Harbor County. About 2.8 million votes were cast in the governor’s race, and a statewide recount is looking more likely by the minute.
The deadline for counties to certify their results to the secretary of state is 5 p.m. today. If the margin of victory is less than 2,000 votes, state law requires an automatic recount. If the margin drops below 150 votes, there will be a hand recount. Of the six statewide recounts since 1968, none changed the outcome of an election.
About 6,000 votes remain to be counted today. The largest chunks are from King, Grays Harbor, Benton and Stevens counties.
Tuesday’s drama began when Grays Harbor County officials started recounting all 28,000 of their ballots after discovering a glitch that had mistakenly inflated Rossi’s total. The recount was expected to give 500 more votes to Gregoire.
Then, on Tuesday afternoon, Superior Court Judge Dean Lum ruled that King County should count provisional ballots that the Republican Party had challenged. The provisional ballots heavily favor Gregoire.
“We should make sure the ballots of all legitimate voters have been counted,” said Gov. Gary Locke, a Democrat who is retiring after two terms.
Rossi and Gregoire have traded the lead back and forth since election night. Going into the race, the 57-year-old Gregoire was heavily favored to win. Rossi, a 45-year-old commercial real estate agent, hoped to become Washington’s first Republican governor in 20 years.
Gregoire has served as state attorney general for the past 12 years and ran on her record of public service, while also promising change in the governor’s office. Rossi, a two-term state senator who started the campaign with little name recognition outside his district, touted his business experience and told voters he would be the real candidate for change.
In Grays Harbor County, Rossi had been leading by 231 votes. After the recount, Auditor Vern Spatz estimated that Gregoire would lead by 277 votes.
“We are recounting 100 percent of all ballots,” Spatz said Tuesday. “It’s very important to us that the election be an open process and everybody is comfortable with those numbers.”
Spatz said the unusually high turnout aroused suspicion that something might be wrong. On Monday, Grays Harbor County was reporting 93 percent turnout – much higher than anywhere else in the state. Officials checked the system and found the problem was with the ballot reporting, not the actual counting.
After the ballots were counted, the results were saved on computer disks and downloaded into another computer to keep a running tally. Some of the disks were apparently downloaded twice by mistake, Spatz said.
He said Grays Harbor should be able to recount all its ballots by this morning.
Meanwhile, a court battle unfolded in King County over fewer than 1,000 provisional ballots. The state GOP went to court to try to stop the count of some provisional ballots. Democrats on Monday had turned in affidavits from 400 voters whose provisional ballot signatures did not match their signature on file with their voter registration.
Democrats criticized the Republican lawsuit and rejoiced at the ruling.
“This was a good ruling to make sure that every vote is counted and to make sure the election takes place with transparency,” said state Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt. He said he believes Gregoire will win, “but it is going to come down to the very end.”
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