The Washington state Democratic party plunked down its $730,000 deposit to request a full statewide manual recount of the 2004 gubernatorial election on Friday afternoon. Many thanks are due to Kossacks, Howard Dean's
Democracy for America,
MoveOnPAC, the Kerry campaign, and yes, the
DNC for their help in raising funds for that deposit and future expenditures.
As your principal dKos chronicler of the initial count and the mandatory automated recount, I stand ready to report on the progress of the hand recount, which is supposed to begin today and last for a couple of weeks.
But first, a detour to the courts...
Well, we knew it would get to be that way, didn't we? Thanks to a recent diary by
Lahdee, we learn that the state Democrats are in state court to ask that all ballots be considered in the recount. That would include ballots previously rejected due to supposed signature mismatches, address problems, and the like. The suit also requests that procedures and processes be carried out as similarly as possible in all 39 counties. As
SusanHu has noted from Port Angeles, Clallam County interprets "observe" to mean that members of the community can watch from a distance while workers handle ballots. In King County, community members will be permitted to stand close enough to "observe" the ballots themselves.
Predictably, the Republicans want to reprocess only the previously-accepted ballots. Oral arguments will be heard in the state Supreme Court this week.
At Saturday's King County Democratic Central Committee (KCDCC) reorganization meeting -- attended by yours truly in his role as an elected Precinct Committee Officer -- we heard short updates from state Chair Paul Berendt and DNC member David McDonald. The latter is also working as the state Dems chief lawyer for the recount operation.
I don't have the full details of McDonald's talk, but he did briefly discuss identified inconsistencies in the initial count and the automated recount. In particular, he described a small (Rossi-favoring) county where the mandatory recount found enough additional ballots compared to the initial count that the equivalent change in (Gregoire-favoring) King County would have been 2700 votes. King County's recount total was, in fact, only 336 more votes than initially.
It was speculated during the meeting that McDonald was referring to Grant County, where the recount total exceeded the initial by 52 out of around 26,000 total votes; Rossi won Grant by 67.6% to Gregoire's 30.3%, and the recount added 44 votes to his total, as compared to 26 new Gregoire votes (raising the margin by 18). On further examination, however, I think he was talking about Skagit County, which added 147 votes to a total of around 52,000. Furthermore, the overall vote in Skagit was fairly even, with Rossi ahead 52.6% to 45.0%, whereas the percentages were more in Dino's favor among the newly-added ballots (he picked up 89 additional votes to Gregoire's 71, adding another 18 to the margin).
Skagit was, in fact, one of only two counties where we saw both
- large (in double-figures, at least) changes in the vote totals for individual candidates
- Rossi did better in the newfound votes than he had in the initial count
The other such county, Adams, added only 7 ballots to its total count but was able to "call" 41 additional votes for a candidate.
McDonald didn't address the oddities I mentioned in my recount wrapup. As I noted at that time, three counties made what are probably unimportant clerical errors in their reports. A fourth county, Cowlitz, remains a mystery. The county tallied 99 fewer ballots in the recount than the initial count, with both major candidates losing votes (fewer Gregoire votes vanished, so she actually cut into the margin by 11 votes in this ever-so-slightly blue county).
I don't know whether the court cases will delay the start of the recount. I don't see why it would; certainly, the counties can recheck the previously-accepted ballots while waiting for a decision on how to handle the ballots in question. OTOH, the interpretation of "observe" and other aspects of the overall openness of the process might affect all ballots, so perhaps all counting will be enjoined (though I doubt it).
Once the counts begin to be reported on the invaluable Washington Secretary of State website, I'll do my best to report and analyze them for the dKos community. Stay tuned!