Tedious hand recount begins
Mason County tally finds 19 new votes in governor's race

By CHRIS McGANN AND NEIL MODIE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER    09 December 2004

Nineteen new ballots turned up in Mason County yesterday as election officials there and in five other counties began hand-recounting ballots to resolve the governor's race that Republican Dino Rossi won by just 42 votes.

Rossi's lead over Democrat Christine Gregoire grew by three votes when the additional votes were factored in.

"This is exactly why we needed to do a hand recount," said Kirstin Brost, spokeswoman for state Democrats. "These are 19 votes that the machines couldn't count. They represent 19 people whose votes should matter."

Mason and Garfield counties completed manual retallies of 26,289 votes, less than 1 percent of the 2.8 million cast statewide for governor last month.

Clark, Skamania, San Juan and Benton counties also began their hand recounts yesterday. King County, with about 900,000 ballots, has by far the most to retally. It began preparations for its recount and hopes to begin tomorrow.

Last week the Democrats demanded and agreed to pay for the statewide hand recount after the original tally that had Rossi ahead by 261 votes and the automatic machine recount that gave him a 42-vote margin of victory.

Secretary of State Sam Reed said he does not expect much variance between the second mechanical count and the statewide hand recount due to be completed shortly before Christmas.

He was not surprised that the count in Garfield County yielded identical totals.

"But 42 votes is such a small number that (it) is well within the reach of a few," Reed said. "We have no idea how this race is going to come out."

  
  
Democrats have also filed a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court asking, among other things, that county elections officials reinspect about 15,000 ballots deemed invalid before the first two counts.

Reed, who was named in the lawsuit, has said the law is clear and has instructed county election officials not to reinspect rejected votes.

The high court yesterday agreed to hear oral arguments Monday.

Mason County Elections Superintendent Pat Sykora said none of the additional votes counted yesterday had been previously rejected.

Instead, reinspection of the19 legal ballots revealed voter intent that had not been picked up by machines. In most cases, the canvassing board discovered partially detached chads in the punch-card ballots and counted the votes, Sykora said. Three other ballots had been legally corrected by the voter.

Brost said the Democrats have been arguing all along that a race this close merits taking a closer look.

"It's about an accurate count," Brost said. "(Rossi) picked up three votes; we are not arguing these results."

Brost asked rhetorically if the Republicans think these votes should have been thrown out.

"That's not an issue," said Rossi's spokeswoman, Mary Lane. "We don't want to throw out legal ballots. Rossi doesn't oppose a hand recount, and we believe that if it's done by the rules, that he will win for a third time."

Rossi and the Republicans have saved their harshest criticism not for the manual recount but for the Democrat's contention that rejected votes be reconsidered.

"The problem we have is Christine Gregoire wants to change the rules," Lane said. "I hope the court will not decide to change the standards for elections that have been in place for decades."

In King County, election workers began sorting ballots and laying the groundwork for the hand recount.

Elections officials there are dealing with a record number of ballots 594,000 absentees and 305,000 polling-place ballots. The number is so enormous that it is taking 80 recount boards, each with three workers, two days just to sort them before counting begins.

Sorting of the poll ballots by precinct began yesterday in an otherwise mostly empty office building at Boeing Field while sorting of absentees by legislative district began at a county mail-ballot operations facility in south Seattle. County Elections Superintendent Bill Huennekens called it "just a laborious process."

Starting tomorrow, he said, election officials hope to begin the actual recount, by boards that each consist of one Democrat, one Republican and one county appointee, and watched over by as many as 34 observers from each party.

Security was tight at both recount sites yesterday. Sheriff's deputies watched who came in and out of the sorting rooms. Workers and visitors were prohibited from taking purses, coats and other items into the room. News media and other visitors were restricted to an area roped off from the sorting. Everyone had to sign in and sign out.

Election supervisors were assigned white badges, other election staffers orange badges and political party observers white badges. County recount board workers wore blue badges, Democratic board workers green, Republicans red and news media yellow badges. Party observers and visitors aren't allowed to talk with recount workers.

The county and the political parties have recruited workers mostly retirees, unemployed or other people with time on their hands to work six days a week, 10 hours a day, for $12.70 an hour. Half the boards will work all day Saturday and the other half all day Sunday.

"It's not the most exciting thing in the world," said Will Affleck-Asch, an unpaid Democratic Party observer from Fremont who is volunteering part time.

Huennekens said the work schedule is "a compromise between people having lives it's the holiday season and our wanting to get it right" in the recount.

If the recount goes according to election officials' estimate, the counting will be completed three days before Christmas.

Coordinators for both parties said they were generally satisfied with the procedure.

"We've got very stringent, but for the most part reasonable, rules," said Paul Berry, a King County coordinator for the state Democratic Party.

"It seems as though it should work," agreed Dan Brady, the King County recount coordinator for the state Republican Party. "There's a lot of activity here. That's our challenge, to keep an eye on everything and make sure it works."

In the hand recount, once the ballots are sorted, each recount board will receive one precinct's ballots at a time. They will be divided into piles, for votes for Rossi, for Gregoire, for Libertarian candidate Ruth Bennett and other piles for under-votes (in which no vote was cast for governor), over-votes (those cast for more than one candidate for governor) and write-in votes.

Each Democrat and Republican will count all of each precinct's ballots.

If the counts don't match, they will count again, Huennekens said, and the recorder, or third recount board member, then will count them. If the counts still don't match, they will be given to another board to count something Huennekens considers highly unlikely.