Recount continues in Washington governor's race
12/9/2004, 5:44 p.m. PT
By ELIZABETH M. GILLESPIE  Associated Press    

SEATTLE (AP) ? Most of Washington's counties began their third and final tally of the governor's race on Thursday, scrutinizing stacks of ballots by hand to see if any mistakes were made in the machine recount of some 2.9 million ballots. 
With 10 of the state's 39 counties reporting results by early evening, Republican Dino Rossi posted a net gain of one vote over Democrat Christine Gregoire.

Rossi, a former state Senate budget chairman, beat Gregoire, the state's three-term attorney general, by 261 votes in the first count, then by 42 votes in an automatic machine recount.

Democrats are paying for a statewide hand recount that's expected to cost more than $1 million. Six counties started on Wednesday, and most of the others started on Thursday.

Election workers in King County, the state's largest, spent a second day sorting ballots by precinct on Thursday and expected to begin the actual recount Friday morning, starting with votes cast at the polls. That's expected to take several days, then absentee ballots will be recounted.

Dean Logan, the county's elections director, said he expects the recount of nearly 900,000 votes to wrap up a few days before Christmas ? unless the state Supreme Court tells counties to take a second look at ballots previously rejected by canvassing boards. If that happens, he said the recount would stretch into next year.

Pierce County also spent Thursday sorting its ballots and expected to begin recounting them Monday. "This kind of work, if people get tired, mistakes happen," Auditor Pat McCarthy said. "We can't push people beyond an eight-hour day."

Meanwhile in Snohomish County, election workers finished sorting cash register receipt-like rolls of paper printed by touch-screen computers on Election Day. Election workers will enter those results into a spreadsheet, then compare that tally with the previous count.

Auditor Bob Terwilliger said he planned to give elections staff a few days off before beginning the recount on Monday.

At one point, officials in Snohomish and Yakima counties ? the only two in the state that use electronic voting machines at the polls ? thought they might have to print out tens of thousands of ballots on letter-sized sheets of paper. Then, after negotiating with both political parties, they agreed on the less time-consuming option.

Skamania County was the first to report its recount results Thursday, giving Rossi three extra votes and Gregoire one. Auditor Mike Garvison said the four new votes came from ballots that had pencil markings too faint for the optical-scan machines to read. "Once the human eye looked at that pencil mark, we said, 'That's a vote.'"

Election workers kicked back a bit, but weren't ready to celebrate until the Supreme Court rules on whether canvassing boards have more work ahead of them.

As of 5 p.m. Thursday, Ferry, Garfield, Grays Harbor, Jefferson, Lincoln, Mason, Pacific, Pend Oreille, Skamania and Wahkiakum counties had reported results, giving Gregoire 28 new votes and Rossi 29, while Libertarian Ruth Bennett lost two votes.

Gregoire, 57, led the state Ecology Department before being elected attorney general 12 years ago and is best known for her successful battle with the tobacco industry. Rossi, 45, is a commercial real-estate agent and self-made millionaire who gave up his state Senate seat to run for governor.