Republicans to sue King County over 573 ballots

By REBECCA COOK
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER   16 December 2004

SEATTLE The closest governor's election in state history is sparking yet another lawsuit, as Republicans try to prevent King County from including 573 newly discovered ballots in the hand recount.

King County election officials want to count the ballots, which they say are valid votes that election workers mistakenly rejected. Republicans want those ballots to stay rejected - or at the very least, they want King County to investigate further before adding them to the mix.

"If King County moves forward we will never know the truth about those ballots," said Republican State Party Chairman Chris Vance. "We want to get some answers about these very suspicious ballots."

A Pierce County Superior Court judge is tentatively scheduled to hear a state GOP motion for a temporary restraining order against King County Elections on Friday.

Republican Dino Rossi won the Nov. 2 election over Democrat Christine Gregoire by 261 votes in the first count and by 42 after a machine recount. On Thursday, with every county except King, Pierce and Spokane reporting, Rossi had gained 32 votes in the hand recount for a margin of 74.

The newly discovered ballots in King County, if counted, could reverse the outcome and make Gregoire the winner.

"Dino Rossi is the accidental Gov.-Elect," Democratic State Party Chairman Paul Berendt said Thursday. "The only reason he was in the lead at the end of the last count is because of King County's mistake. Now that the mistakes are being fixed, (Republicans) want to stop valid votes from being counted."

The King County Canvassing Board voted 2-1 on Wednesday to begin recanvassing the 573 ballots. King County Elections Director Dean Logan said the absentee ballots were not counted originally because there was a problem with how the voters' signatures had been scanned into the county's computer system. Election workers should have checked the paper files for signatures, but instead the ballots were mistakenly rejected.

The error was discovered only after King County Councilman Larry Phillips saw his name on a list of rejected absentee ballots last Sunday and notified Logan.

Voting for the recanvassing were Democratic King County Councilman Dwight Pelz and Logan, who works for Democratic County Executive Ron Sims; voting no was Dan Satterberg, chief of staff for Republican King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng.

On Thursday, election workers continued their search of the paper voter registration files to find the signatures of the 573 voters. By Thursday afternoon they had found 311 signatures, said Bill Huennekens, county election superintendent.

Vance said the Republicans had planned to file their motion in Pierce County Superior Court on Thursday. But that action was delayed until Friday as GOP lawyers crafted the lawsuit.

Specifically, the party wants to stop King County from taking ballots out of their outer envelopes, which bear the voter's signature. Vance said removing the envelopes would make it far more difficult to determine where the ballots came from, whether they were stored correctly and why they were not counted previously.

Huennekens said county workers will not remove any ballots from their security envelopes until the Republicans' lawsuit is resolved.

Zach Oaks, 22, a Gregoire supporter from Issaquah, said he was "pretty irritated" to learn his vote was one of the 573 not counted.

"What makes my vote any less important than anyone else's?" he asked Thursday. "I did everything right. It's really pretty ridiculous."

The King County Canvassing Board is scheduled to meet again on Monday to decide whether to count the 573 absentee ballots after they are verified.

The board will also decide the fate of 22 other uncounted ballots, found this week in the side bins of plastic base units in which polling machines sit.

All ballots should have been logged on Election Night and returned in a sealed bag to election headquarters, but these 22 apparently weren't. They've been sitting unsecured at various polling places since the election.

Meanwhile, the Pierce County Canvassing Board was scheduled to meet Friday to decide what to do with a single ballot found stuck inside a vote-counting machine. The provisional ballot was discovered when election workers took apart the machines last week to make room for the hand recount.

The hand recount is expected to finish by Dec. 22, though there's no deadline set in state law. The governor's inauguration is scheduled for Jan. 12.

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