Senate candidate wants recount

JOSEPH TURNER; The Tacoma News Tribune 29 September 2004

The Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, who fell 100 votes short of winning a spot on the general election ballot, is asking a judge to make state election officials put his name there anyway.

J. Mills, a member of the Libertarian Party of Washington, claims that the computer software used to count ballots in the Sept. 14 primary election could be unreliable and might not have counted all the votes he got.

Mills needed to pull down 1 percent of the 1,304,517 votes cast in the Senate race that included incumbent Sen. Patty Murray (D-Seattle), U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt (R-Spokane) and several others. Mills got 12,945 votes.

Mills wants a recount in the six counties that used consolidated ballots in the primary election, and wants to stop county election officials from printing ballots and voter guides for the Nov. 2 general election until the matter is resolved.

Consolidated ballots were used in six counties, including Pierce, King, Snohomish and Kitsap. They were a single ballot that listed the slate of candidates for Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians, as well as candidates in nonpartisan races. Voters were instructed to check a box indicating which party they were picking, then vote only for a candidate from that party in each race.

The state's other 33 counties had four separate ballots, and their voters were supposed to choose only one.

"We're very concerned about the accuracy of the software used to tabulate votes in the Puget Sound area," Mills said. "I think if we did a recount of the six counties, we would get the votes we needed to win."

The prospect of a recount worries local election officials.

"I hope that the Libertarian Party isn't holding hostage the general election ballot preparation for a small number of candidates," said Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy.

She said her staff was getting ready to order November election ballots Tuesday because they need the lead time to make sure ballots are mailed out early enough.

"If we don't get them to the printer by Thursday, it will jeopardize the election for absentee voters, particularly the military and overseas voters," she said.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge Richard Strophy has scheduled a hearing on the issues at 9 a.m. today.

The Libertarian Party also wants to get rid of the requirement that major party candidates get at least 1 percent of the primary vote in their respective races. Besides Mills, it appears that Ruth Bennett, the Libertarian candidate for governor, and three candidates in legislative races failed to meet the 1 percent threshold. In Bennett's case, she and fellow Libertarian Michael Nelson split the Libertarian vote for governor, which left both shy of the 1 percent minimum.

Libertarian candidates for other statewide offices and those in 29 other legislative races appear to have received enough votes to advance to the November election.

Mills said that what makes him suspicious of the vote-counting software used in the Puget Sound counties is the number of people who didn't a political party. In the counties that had four ballots, it's about 5 percent. In the counties that had a consolidated ballot, it's almost 10 percent - twice as high.

"That suggests we're getting undercounted in the counties that mattered most to us," he said.

Statewide, the number of voters who ed Libertarian ballots was 1.03 percent of the total - theoretically enough to qualify all of the party's candidates.

"Why would you deliberately a Libertarian ballot and not vote for the party's U.S. Senate candidate?" asked Richard Shepard, a Tacoma lawyer for the Libertarians.

To avoid any delays from a recount, the judge also could just order Secretary of State Sam Reed to put the Libertarians on the Nov. 2 general election ballot, Shepard said.