New votes surface in recount
But Rossi picks up 28 more than Gregoire to lengthen his lead

By CHRIS McGANN AND PAUL NYHAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS    11 December 2004

New votes continued to turn up yesterday in the governor's race recount, with 17 of 39 counties reporting, but Christine Gregoire still has not benefited from the hand tally commissioned last week by the state Democratic Party.

Gregoire's best hope of reversing Gov.-elect Dino Rossi's victory may be in King County, where the manual recount of 900,000 votes began yesterday under the close watch of dozens of observers.

"This isn't over until Dec. 23 when King County comes in. It has a third of the vote," Gregoire said.

King County elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said the manual count was going smoothly.

Although she did not rule out finding new votes in King County, she said the overall percentage of new votes would be much less than in the small counties that have already reported.

"I don't think you are going to be seeing very many issues on ballots where voter intent is not obvious," Egan said. "Those would have been addressed during the machine recount. With that said, any issue in which the three-person team cannot find voter intent, then those will be sent to the canvassing board."

In the first count after the Nov. 2 election, Rossi won by just 261 votes. That triggered an automatic, statewide machine recount. The results of that recount showed that Rossi won, but by only 42 votes out of 2.8 million cast. The state is now counting the votes for a third time.

As of last night, Rossi had gained a net 28 votes in the hand recount, extending his lead to 70 votes.

Last Friday, the state Democratic Party agreed to pay for a statewide hand recount in the hope that a closer examination of the ballots would reveal enough new votes for Gregoire to overturn Rossi's victory.

  
 
The party also filed a state Supreme Court lawsuit in the hope of getting counted some of the 15,000 votes deemed invalid in the first two counts. The court will hear oral arguments in the case Monday.

So far, none of the counties has reviewed disqualified ballots. The additional votes were either found after being misfiled or counted because a closer examination revealed voter intent that had previously been overlooked.

Republicans trust that if the court denies the Democrats' request to consider previously rejected ballots, Rossi will win the third count. They have pre-emptively challenged Gregoire's legitimacy should she win the election by litigating the rules.

Gregoire disagreed.

"The divisiveness is because of the rhetoric. If everyone would just take a deep breath and let the professionals do their job and live by the job that they do, this is a good system and a system that ought to be modeled by every state and every nation," Gregoire said.

Despite the uncertainty, both candidates continue to develop plans to become the next governor of Washington.

Rossi, for example, is holding town meetings to discuss the budget, tax policy and other issues with voters. Gregoire is working on her own transition, although she did not discuss details yesterday.

"The challenge for the new governor is you have 50 percent (that) voted for one and 50 percent (that) voted for the other, and this state cannot move forward until we unite," Gregoire said as she left the annual Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle breakfast yesterday, which Rossi also attended. Neither candidate publicly addressed the audience.

Gregoire has distanced herself from the lawsuit, but said she fully supports the legal effort.

"I am not the client, the party is the client. I am not paying the lawyers, the party is paying the lawyers," Gregoire said yesterday morning. "We are electing one governor and every vote should count and count the same."

Rossi said the court should not alter the rules of voting in the midst of an election.

"That is not how we do things," Rossi said after the breakfast.