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This is The one to Watch

1,371,153 - 48.8666% - Christine Gregoire - Democrat	
1,371,414 - 48.8759% - Dino Rossi - Republican	
   63,346 -  2.2576% - Ruth Bennett - Libertarian	

You know its tight when the Secretary of State goes up to four decimal places. A mandatory recount is in order, and Rossi is having to fight for a certain type of provisional ballot to be counted in some counties where he leads (which happen to have Democrats running the show) while Gregroire is getting the same types of ballots here in King county, by court order.

Of course, republicans were earlier arguing not to let any of those ballots be counted, but I think the law, once ruled upon, should be applied uniformly. The article fromt he Seattle Times follows:

Local News: Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Gregoire edges ahead

By Ralph Thomas and Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporters

With her hopes of being elected governor slipping away, Democratic Attorney General Christine Gregoire got just the break she needed yesterday when thousands of extra ballots turned up in King County.

The unexpectedly large batch of outstanding ballots — nearly double what the county projected just three days earlier — helped push Gregoire back ahead of Republican Dino Rossi.

Rossi started the day yesterday with a nearly 2,000-vote lead, but by nightfall was trailing by 158 votes after nearly 30,000 more absentee and provisional ballots were tallied statewide.

Gregoire’s lead represents about one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the nearly 2.8 million votes counted in the race.

It appears increasingly likely the race will go to a recount, which is required if the final difference is less than one-half of 1 percent and less than 2,000 votes. If the margin is less than 150 votes, the recount must be done by hand unless the candidates agree to another procedure.

In what has been an emotional roller-coaster ride for both campaigns, yesterday’s count marked the fourth time the lead has changed hands in the two weeks since Election Day.

There are an estimated 21,700 ballots left to tally statewide — ranging from 4,000 in King County to less than five in some counties. Election officials have until tomorrow to finish counting and certify the vote.

Since Friday, King County estimated it had about 11,000 absentee and provisional ballots left to count. But county officials stunned both campaigns when they announced they were counting nearly 17,000 ballots yesterday and still would have 4,000 more to count today.

King County Elections Director Dean Logan said the number of votes left in the county turned out to be higher than estimated because more absentee voters than expected returned their ballots and a larger-than-expected number of provisional ballots were found valid.

A big batch of new ballots from King County was about the only thing that could have salvaged the race for Gregoire. She is leading Rossi by a nearly 60-40 margin there but is trailing almost everywhere else in the state.

Rossi is leading Gregoire in 32 of 39 counties, and more than half of the outstanding ballots are estimated to be in those counties.

For Rossi and the Republicans, the situation is hauntingly similar to what happened in the 2000 race for the U.S. Senate.

In that race, Democrat Maria Cantwell trailed incumbent Republican Sen. Slade Gorton throughout most of the two-week absentee-ballot count. But Cantwell surged ahead of Gorton after King County tallied 3,000 more ballots than expected on the next-to-last day of counting.

Provisional ballots may be cast when a voter goes to a different polling place or when there are uncertainties about the voter’s eligibility. They also are used by absentee voters who didn’t receive ballots in the mail.

Logan had projected a return rate of 83 percent to 84 percent of absentee ballots, but the number rose to between 87 and 88 percent, in large part because of late returns from voters overseas or serving in the armed forces.

Late last week, Logan projected a provisional-ballot validation rate of just more than 80 percent, but by yesterday it had reached 84 percent. The number is difficult to estimate, Logan said, noting that 90 percent of provisional votes were counted in the September primary, but only 78 percent in the 2000 presidential election.

“It was just an estimate,” Logan said of the projection that the county would tally only 11,000 votes today and tomorrow. The estimate was off by 10,000.

Rossi campaign spokeswoman Mary Lane, citing “a huge discrepancy” between the projected and actual number of votes in King County, said she couldn’t rule out a legal challenge.

“We would obviously have to have a good reason for challenging,” Lane said. “The first question to ask is where did these all come from and how do you make a miscalculation that’s off by 10,000 votes with two days left to go before certification?”

For now, Lane said, the campaign’s focus is “to knock on doors all across the state” looking for pro-Rossi provisional voters with signature problems.

State Elections Director Nick Handy said it is difficult to project the number of absentee and provisional votes. After the September primary, he said, the number of those ballots turned out to be double what counties had forecast.

“Every county in the state is changing their estimate every day because that’s the nature of the process,” Handy said.

Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy said King County’s experience illustrates how difficult it is to project the total vote. “If you go too high, people say, ‘What happened to those ballots?’ You tend to go lower because you don’t want that kind of thing to happen.”

Gregoire received another boost yesterday when Democrats delivered affidavits from more than 400 absentee and provisional voters whose votes had been tentatively disqualified by election officials because of signature problems.

State Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt, who led the delegation to King County election headquarters in Seattle, said he expects to bring another 200 affidavits today. Voters have until 4:30 this afternoon to bring in documents demonstrating their eligibility to vote.

Democrats have been contacting voters since King County Superior Court Judge Dean Lum ruled Friday that King County must give the party a list of all provisional voters who have been told their votes won’t be counted unless they sign new voter-registration cards.

Some 929 provisional voters and about 800 absentee voters either failed to sign the envelopes containing their ballots or used signatures that didn’t look like the signatures on their voter-registration cards.

Logan said he is treating voter-signed documents delivered by a political party as no less valid than documents brought in by the voter or delivered through the mail.

State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance said yesterday his party’s lawyers have been scrutinizing the legality of Democrats’ “publicity stunt” of delivering voter affidavits to election officials. He said the law is unclear on the practice but said the party had not, “as of 6:20 tonight,” decided to go to court.

Republican canvassers have been encouraging voters to deliver documents to election officials in person, Vance said.

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