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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Florida Northwest: Will Democrats steal the Washington governorship?
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| Contributor | Summer Intern |
| Last Edited | Summer Intern Dec 17, 2004 07:16pm |
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| Category | Opinion |
| News Date | Monday, November 29, 2004 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | In Seattle's King County alone the vote counting so far has featured such anomalies as 10,000 ballots being mysteriously discovered nearly two weeks after Election Day, election officials "enhancing" hundreds of unreadable optical-scan ballots, and a judge allowing political partisans to selectively track down voters who cast questionable provisional ballots to see if they could turn them into valid votes. Ms. Gregoire gained several hundred votes through such maneuvers, so she has now declared her intention to pay for a hand recount of some of the state's precincts to see if she can take the lead. If a selective recount changes the overall winner, the state would pay for a laborious hand recount of all the votes The process could drag on past Christmas and might eventually have to be settled by the state Supreme Court. Gov. Gary Locke is scheduled to leave office on Jan. 12, but wags are already joking he shouldn't be pack his bags too soon.
The trouble began when it became clear the race was so close it wouldn't be settled by the ballots counted on election night. Washington allows absentee ballots--used by 70% of the voters this year--to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Thus everyone knew that the way late absentee and provisional votes (cast by people not on the registration rolls, and subject to later verification) were counted might wind up swinging the election.
That set off a legal fracas over the 929 people in heavily Democratic King County whose provisional ballots hadn't been counted because of mismatched or missing signatures. Democrats demanded the names and addresses of those voters so they could contact them and correct the errors. County officials responded that in requiring that all 50 states offer provisional ballots Congress had stipulated that such votes remain private. Republican lawyers argued that having partisans scavenge for votes would increase the potential for fraud. |
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