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December 13, 2004
WA Governor Race News

As you may or may not know, the race for governor in my home-for-now state of Washington was insanely close, and we're currently on our hand recount. The results of the mechanical recount had the Republican Dino Rossi ahead by 42 votes.

Today the King County (Seattle's county) Elections Director announced that they've found 561 ballots that were mistakenly rejected because election workers thought the signatures didn't match voter records.

King County is heavily Democratic, so this could easily swing the election in favor of Democrat Christine Gregoire. It's a wild scene out here, man.

Of course, the Republicans are all over the place crying foul. Their favorite line is to say that Gregoire "already lost twice" and this is just an attempt by the Dems to steal the election.

Of course, this is absurd. She hasn't lost once, let alone twice. The race hasn't been decided yet. Each count is not a separate election, you idiots. It's a nice sound bite, I know, and it makes people think they're outraged, but it's misleading and ridiculous. The recount process has a long history, and each successive count produces more accurate results. Finding ballots that were uncounted originally is not changing the rules, it's following the rules. The people who submitted those ballots had the intention of voting for their candidate of choice, and in our system voter intent is much more important than technical errors or election worker incompetence. The voters deserve to have their votes counted.

Voters like King County Council Chairman Larry Phillips, whose ballot was among the 561 never counted.

"I was under the absolute impression not only I voted, but followed the instructions correctly," Phillips said. "If it can happen to the King County Council chairman, it can happen to anyone else."

AP

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