Kitsap helps boost Rossi's lead

By Travis Baker, Bremerton Sun Staff
December 10, 2004

Republican candidate Dino Rossi picked up a net gain of 10 votes Thursday in Kitsap County's hand recount, completed in a single day.

Statewide, Rossi posted a net gain of 11 votes over Democrat Christine Gregoire with 11 of the state's 39 counties finishing their respective recounts. He now leads by 53 votes out of 2.9 million.  
Kitsap's vote total wasn't recorded on the Secretary of State's Web site on Thursday because the hand recount was completed after 6 p.m.

The hand recount found 154 more votes than a previous manual recount. Kitsap's 10-year-old optical scan equipment was blamed for the discrepancy.

Rossi got 82 of them and Democrat Christine Gregoire got 72.

The first 10 counties to complete their hand recounts, all much smaller in population, combined to give Rossi a net gain of one vote over the machine recount. Kitsap's recount brings that total to 11 votes.

County Auditor Karen Flynn said the multitude of human eyes that looked over the Kitsap ballots were able to detect votes for one candidate or the other that the machines had been unable to see.

Election supervisor Dolores Gilmore said they have to walk a middle ground in setting the sensitivity of the scanners, which count a vote if two sides of an arrow corresponding to a candidate are connected by a line.

They want the scanner to detect faint lines without recording smudges or extraneous marks as votes, she said.

The recount was done by three-person teams, one Democrat, one Republican and an observer.

Among the counters was Republican Al Smith, a retired teacher, and Democrat Charlotte Garrido, one-time county commissioner, who were in different teams. They agreed that nearly every precinct their teams counted came back for a second hand count.

Flynn said if the first hand count in each precinct differed from the machine recount, a second hand count was made and its total was accepted.

The counting teams weren't told how much their counts differed from the machines. They were just told to count again, Garrido said.

Smith, Republican counter Ron Simonis and Republican observer Eldon Larson, who didn't do any counting, chatted after their counts ended.

"I saw a large amount of civility here that was really a breath of fresh air," Larson said.

Smith said the observers were "extremely cooperative" and non-confrontive. One challenged a decision his team made, found he was wrong and apologized, he said.

Simonis said the school system missed an educational opportunity in not bringing students to watch the process. "I think Kitsap is a model county for the state when it comes to elections," he said.