Voters glad their ballots finally will count

By LEWIS KAMB
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER   23 December 2004

Weeks ago, they like hundreds of thousands of other Washington residents exercised their right to vote, filling out their choices for office on absentee ballots received from their county elections office.

Residents such as Brian Ecker, a 26-year-old Seattle software developer; and Bill Josie, 73, a lifelong dairy farmer in Enumclaw. When they returned their ballots to elections officials, they thought they'd fulfilled their civic duty.

And they thought that their votes would count. 
   
 But they wouldn't at least not until yesterday, when the state Supreme Court ruled that finally, 50 days after Election Day, ballots cast by Ecker, Josie and more than 700 other King County residents could be tallied in the extraordinary recount of the Washington governor's election.

After learning that his vote would finally be counted, Ecker described his feelings yesterday simply: "Relief," he said. "Overwhelming relief."

"It's been sort of a difficult time, thinking my vote would never matter," said Ecker, a Gregoire supporter. "I understand that one vote among millions is just a blip on the screen. But when you're that blip, it means the world to you."

Like Ecker, several others whose ballots have become the center of a heated controversy in Washington's ridiculously close governor's contest said they were glad their votes will finally count.

Hundreds of absentee ballots were mistakenly set aside and rejected by election workers. When that error was caught last week during the third and final count of votes cast for governor, it set off a firestorm.

Republicans argued that the discovered ballots constituted new votes and shouldn't be part of a mandated recount of the initial result. Friday, the party won a temporary restraining order from a Pierce County judge barring King County from including the ballots in its recount.  
Then yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that the ballots could be counted likely ensuring that Democrat Christine Gregoire would pick up enough votes in the Democratic stronghold county to overcome Republican Dino Rossi, who'd won the first two counts.

Although the court-ordered counting of his ballot and others like it probably will mean his candidate won't win, Josie, a Rossi supporter, said yesterday he was happy with the court's ruling.

"As close as this (election) was, I was very upset that my vote wasn't counted," he said yesterday. "I'm glad it finally will be."

Likewise Joel Swanson, a 22-year-old systems analyst from Shoreline, said the candidate receiving his or any other absentee vote wasn't the issue.

"I'm probably one of the few Rossi voters who wanted them counted," Swanson said yesterday. "But I think it shouldn't matter who you want to win. If these votes are legitimate, they should be counted."

Swanson added that if the votes hadn't been counted, "people aren't going to have faith in the absentee ballot system."

And if that happened, he said, many people simply wouldn't vote.

From the entire episode, Ecker said he's learned a hard lesson.

"I sort of took for granted that my vote was always counted," he said. "Now I know I can't rely on the system. ... From now on, I'm going to check after every election to make sure that my vote has been counted."