Gregoire: Count every vote

By DAVID AMMONS   02 December 2004
AP POLITICAL WRITER

OLYMPIA, Wash. Democrat Christine Gregoire on Thursday urged her party to order a statewide hand recount of the 2.8 million votes for governor, and not just ed counties.

"My request of the state Democratic Party is simple: Count the entire state or don't count at all," she said in a statement released by her campaign office. "Counting every vote is the only right thing to do."

The party had no immediate response. Democrats are expected to order either a full statewide recount or a partial count on Friday.

Gregoire, 57, the three-term attorney general, trailed Republican rival Dino Rossi, 45, a former state Senate power, by just 42 votes after a mandatory recount was certified this week.

The campaign and party have been under pressure to count the full state, rather than "cherry pick" ed counties to try to overturn the election. Outgoing Gov. Gary Locke and other elected officials, as well as many newspaper editorial pages, have urged the party to count all 6,686 precincts.

  
  
Gregoire has previously said she preferred a statewide count, and on Thursday, she made it clear to the party that it's the only proper choice.

"I know it would be cheaper for the party to do a limited hand recount," she said. "And I know it would be possible to just count a few counties and put me in the lead.

"That doesn't work for the voters of our state. From the beginning, this has been about getting all the votes counted so we can know for sure who won the governor's race. ...

"Right now, the governor-elect's office sits empty in Olympia. The only way to fill it will be to have a statewide hand recount.

"In the meantime, both Sen. Rossi and I are working on our transition and assembling an administration. Once the race is over, the winner will be able to take office with confidence. It may take a little while longer, but it's worth a few weeks to have four years of legitimacy."

State Democratic Party officials did not immediately return telephone calls. The party has been scrambling to assemble more than $1 million to pay for a full manual recount.

The recount costs at least 25 cents a ballot, or more than $700,000 for a statewide count. The party said the cost would exceed $1 million after legal bills and staff costs are added.

The fund-raising drive got a big boost when the party's unsuccessful presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, donated $250,000 of his leftover campaign funds to the effort.

On Wednesday, state Democratic Chairman Paul Berendt said it still wasn't clear whether the party would reach its financial goal by the 5 p.m. Friday deadline for ordering a full or partial recount.

The party has been studying which counties to include if a full recount isn't possible. The state's largest county, King, would be a likely target, since Gregoire carried the county by more than 150,000 votes.

Rossi has been urging Gregoire to concede, since he won both the regular count, by 261 votes, and the machine recount, by 42 votes.

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