Judge denies request that some King County ballots not be counted

Sunday, November 21, 2004

KING5.com Staff and Wire Reports

SEATTLE - A federal judge has denied the state Republican Party's bid to force Washington's largest county to stop counting some ballots in the recount of the governor's race.

In a conference call with lawyers on Sunday, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman denied the GOP's request for a temporary restraining order barring King County from hand-counting ballots rejected by machines because they can't be read electronically.

Republicans filed their lawsuit Saturday, arguing that ballots that machines spit out should be excluded from the recount because they have to be checked by hand -- a process that's not being used in other counties where punch card ballots were used instead of optical scanners.

Democrats called it a good day for voters while Republicans downplayed the significance of the ruling, noting that it dealt with only one aspect of the lawsuit.

GOP Chairman Chris Vance said Republicans don't trust one of the assurances that led to the ruling: that all ballots in question are being kept separate from the others so they can be reviewed to see if any mistakes have been made.

Rossi confident

If Rossi wins he would be the state's first Republican governor in 20 years. State law requires a machine recount because the margin is less than 2,000 votes.

Rossi flew to New Orleans early Thursday to spend a day meeting his possible future colleagues at the Republican Governors Association meeting.

Though not claiming victory yet, Rossi told KING5 News he’s confident the recount won’t change the result.

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“It was very clear it wasn't just Republicans it was Independents and a whole lot of Democrats that came to help. We plan on working in a bipartisan fashion to make this work and turn this state around.” He said.

Gregoire declared the race a "virtual tie" on Wednesday and spent Thursday working with her campaign staff and transition team.

“Hang tough. I believe in you and I believe in this Democratic process and every vote counts,” she told supporters Wednesday night.

Recounts in Washington state typically give more votes to the original winner, and no statewide recount has reversed the results of an election. But with just 261 votes separating the two candidates, all bets are off.

"Historically, recounts have not changed the outcomes of major elections," Secretary of State Sam Reed said Thursday. "If people are pulling for the Attorney General, I would say don't get your hopes up too high. But mathematically it certainly is possible (for the results to change). So Senator Rossi's people shouldn't feel like they've got it clinched."

Both campaigns and both parties plan to station observers in every county and will have lawyers on-call, as they did on Election Day.

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"We will keep our eyes out for any irregularities and do our best to make sure every vote gets counted," said Gregoire campaign spokesman Morton Brilliant. "However long this process takes, it will be worth it." Vote totals may change in the recount for several reasons.

Fourteen counties in Washington use punchcard ballots. A second trip through vote-counting machines will likely break off some hanging chads -- those little bits of paper left dangling when voters fail to punch their ballots forcefully enough, made infamous by the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

Fill-in-the-bubble ballots, technically called optical scan ballots, could register more or fewer votes the second time around depending on how the machines interpret bubbles that are lightly filled in.

"The machines are pretty touchy," Reed said.

In Snohomish County, KING 5 News reported some of the machines jammed during the initial count and depending on the operator at the time, some ballots may have gone unread.

Bob Terwilliger, the Snohomish County Auditor, told KING5 News, “and in that decision making process, they may actually decide a ballot was read that wasn’t or it wasn’t read and it ws, so that could cause some variation.”

The two counties that use electronic touch-screen voting will take the disks or cartridges that capture vote results and run them through a computer program again.

Terwilliger said some voters do write in listed candidates. So in the recount - to be completed next Wednesday - all ballots with write-in candidates in the governor's race will be hand counted, in all 39 counties.

And he says there is no question the recount total will be different from the first tally, results of which were officially announced Wednesday

Suspicions of wrongdoing

Republicans are still suspicious of the votes in King County, and rumors fueled by an anonymous e-mail have been swirling about various electoral shenanigans there. But no one has stepped forward with a shred of proof of any wrongdoing.

"That's sadly what you see when there's high emotions in a close race," Logan said. "The election has been conducted in a very transparent manner."

Vance said angry Republicans called his office screaming on Wednesday, convinced the election was about to be "stolen."

"If we thought there was something to fight, we would fight," Vance said. But so far, nothing substantial has surfaced.

Vance warned of trouble if the recount puts Gregoire ahead of Rossi: "If this election turns over, I'm going to have a hard time keeping Republicans calm."

Ongoing suspense is perhaps the only sure thing in this election. After the machine recount is done, the state will certify the results of the election on Dec. 2.

After that, the candidates or the state parties can demand a hand recount or another machine recount. They would have to pay $420,000 for a machine recount or $700,000 for a hand recount, unless the recount changes the winner, in which case taxpayers get the tab.