I think maybe they were trying to mess up the carefully developed series of analyses and projections I've worked up over the last week or so (see
early this evening,
last night,
Friday,
Thursday,
last Wednesday,
last Tuesday night,
Tuesday morning,
last Monday). How else to explain that Grays Harbor County discovered some errors in its tally and had to start all over again?
Good thing I'd heard about their little contretemps before updating their row in my spreadsheet this evening. Otherwise it would have been difficult to figure out how the county's vote total went from 33,453 yesterday to 26,196 today. The officials in that county must have really earned their pay today, as their redone tally leaves just 1221 ballots uncounted.
Oh, you were looking maybe for the current status report for this amazingly close race? Well, with one day's counting remaining before the results are certified, Dino Rossi (R-stealth wingnut) is ahead of Christine Gregoire (D-mealymouthed wimp) by 19, count 'em, 19 votes.
Based on current vote percentages for Gregoire, Rossi, and Libertarian Ruth Bennett, I now project Rossi to hold that lead and extend it somewhat -- to 599 votes. Whether or not that projection holds, it seems all but certain that once the the result is certified there will be a recount. State law provides for an automatic recount if the margin is less than 0.5% and smaller than 2000 votes. In that situation, well, who knows what will happen? That recount would take approximately another week.
The Grays Harbor situation -- apparently, some precincts were inadvertently double-counted -- returned the county to the Gregoire fold, joining just seven other counties. Yesterday, Rossi appeared to hold a 231-vote edge in the county; today, he trails Gregoire there by 164 votes. That's a 395-vote swing.
Even so, Gregoire couldn't hold yesterday's lead in the overall race. A poor day in King (only 55.5% of the 3581 ballots counted there) and Thurston Counties, as well as the large number of ballots tallied in heavily-Republican counties such as Benton and Yakima, put Dino back ahead by an eyelash.
The losing candidate can request and pay for a recount, even if the margin is large enough not to trigger the automatic recount. Various rules and regulations govern the process, to the point where the relative prices (and appropriate circumstances) of machine-based and manual recounts are specified.
I wish I could be less equivocal about the outcome of the gubernatorial race. As I've said before, the only reason it's even close in this definitively Blue state is that Christine Gregoire is an extremely weak candidate who ran a really piss-poor campaign. She might still win the race, or she might not.