With 2.8 million votes cast in Washington's gubernatorial race, the initial machine count showed Dino Rossi (R) leading Christine Gregoire (D) by 261 votes. With this margin, state law requires a machine recount, so paper ballots were run through machines again, and electronic votes in two counties were recalculated. The machine recount reduced Mr. Rossi's lead to 42 votes.*

The Gregoire campaign will request (and pay for) a manual recount of the votes in some counties. Not surprisingly, the Rossi campaign sees no need for it.

... Several members of Mr. Rossi's transition team held a news conference outside his campaign headquarters in Bellevue, east of Seattle. "The votes have been counted twice," said one team member, Kathy Lambert, a King County councilwoman. "We know very clearly who won."

Discounting the 700 ballots not included in King County's first count (why weren't they included?) and the 261 votes not included in Snohomish County's initial count, four counties 'lost' a total of 96 votes, and 32 counties 'found' 1564 votes. Only three counties' totals remained unchanged (one punch card, one optical scan, one e-voting).

Where did the new votes come from? Where did the old votes go? Only a manual recount can answer those questions.

One more question: Why is Gregoire required to pay for the manual recount? If King and Snohomish counties had included all their ballots in the original count, based on the percentages of the county totals, the margin would have been about 138 votes, and the state would have paid for a manual recount.