After losing the first two counts in the extraordinarily close Washington governor's race, Democrat Christine Gregoire pulled ahead by 10 votes after King County reported its hand recount results on Wednesday. Gregoire's slim margin could widen on Thursday, when Democrat-heavy King County plans to count 700-plus belatedly discovered ballots. Over Republicans' objections, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that those ballots should be counted. At a news conference in Seattle, Gregoire said she won't declare victory yet. "Keep the faith," she told cheering supporters. "The election process is working exactly as it should." According to the Democratic Playbook.
"When Christine Gregoire was 261 and then 42 votes behind, she referred to it as a 'tie,'" Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane said, quoting Gregoire's reaction to Rossi's victories in the first two statewide vote counts. "We're not going to call this a tie but it is extremely close. It's certainly too close to call and Dino is not conceding," Lane said. "This election is not over."
Gregoire, 57, a three-term attorney general, was the favorite going into the election against Rossi, 45, a real estate agent and former state senator. But Rossi suprised political experts by squeaking out a 261-vote win over Gregoire. His lead was whittled to 42 votes in a subsequent machine recount. Democrats paid $730,000 for the hand recount, though by law the state has to repay the party if the recount reverses the results. Gregoire won another victory on Wednesday when the state Supreme Court ruled that King County should include hundreds of recently discovered ballots in the hand recount of the still-undecided governor's race. Gregoire called the high court's decision "a victory for the voters of the state of Washington."
I have witnessed this Democratic tactic many times here in California. The election is close and suddenly election officials discover hundreds (or thousands) of uncounted (and questionable) ballots that just happened to be stored by the Democratic election official. Check with your state elections official and I bet you will find that EVERY election the last precinct to file is large and predominately democratic. It's almost as if they are waiting to see if they need to spring the ballot surprise or not.
Here in California, Berkley and San Francisco are always the last two places to file their results. What if it was Orange County (Very Red) and they suddenly had a thousand ballots that could turn the election? The LLL would descend on that county with an army of lawyers and demonstrators.
I say let the results stand and let the Democrat become the next Governor. It may not be right but it's probably the right thing to do. Mr. Rossi stand a good chance of winning the Senate race in 2006 and retiring another Democrat from the Senate. It would be a nice counter balance to the other Senator Pat Murray — C (Communist).
| Bunch of lightweight wimps. Here in Chicago, no self-respecting ward-heeler would ever allow an election to be this close in the first place. We don't discover uncounted ballots after the election, we make sure they all get counted the first time. Old story: young pup working his first election rigs a precinct so that the final vote is something like 1400 for the Democrat and 0 for the Republican. The old ward boss is aghast, rips the pup a new one and reminds him that no one, no one will believe this. He then tells the young pup to go back and give the Republican candidate 3 votes. That's how we do things Chicago-style. |