Fight over ballots moves to court

10:13 PM PST on Tuesday, December 7, 2004

From KING 5 Staff and Wire Reports

OLYMPIA, Wash. - With a police escort and under the watchful eyes of political observers, King County moved some ballots to a new counting facility in Tukwila, Wash., Tuesday morning – all in preparation for the beginning of the second recount in the governor’s race.

King County transported 334,154 poll ballots to its recount facility where sorting will take place through Friday. The remaining 564,420 absentee ballots will be sorted at the Mail Ballot facility. Once sorted, the absentee ballots will be transported to the E. Marginal Way Recount Facility to be manually counted.

The race ended in a virtual dead heat in the first two counts. After Rossi was certified the winner by just 42 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast, the Democrats on Friday ordered a manual recount and went to the state Supreme Court to demand that some previously disqualified ballots be counted this time.

On Tuesday morning, state Republicans asked the State Supreme Court to dismiss the Democrats' lawsuit, according to Wendy Ferrell, in the office of the Administrator of the Courts.

The Republican response to the Democrats' suit says the votes have already been counted and recounted and it is wrong to change the rules under which the first two counts were conducted.

Republicans say one memo shows "hypocrisy" on Christine Gregoire's behalf.

A 1996 memo from then Secretary of State Ralph Munro states that "we are advised by the attorney general that state law makes no provision for the challenge of ballots or voters during the recount … the decision of the canvassing board with respect to the inclusion or exclusion of a particular ballot during the canvass is not open to question during the recount."

But the Democrats say this opinion came from a prior attorney general, not Gregoire.

The next move is up to the court, which, must announce whether it will hear oral arguments on the lawsuit and, if so, when.

The court could also ask for additional briefs on specific issues from the state parties.

It's not clear when that announcement might come.

Secretary of State Sam Reed on Monday ordered an unprecedented statewide hand recount in the state's closest gubernatorial race on record between Republican Dino Rossi and Democrat Christine Gregoire

Elections officials from the state's three most populous counties briefed reporters on how the hand count will be conducted.

In King County, about 300 workers will have to manually tally 898,000 paper ballots, which King County Elections Director Dean Logan said should be done by Dec. 22, barring any legal challenges.

The counting process will continue seven days a week.

Most will be gathered at space leased by the county for the purpose at 9010 E. Marginal Way in Tukwila.

The workers include 80 people designated by each party to sit at tables with election workers counting ballots.

The recounting facility itself includes a fenced and locked area where the ballots can be stored when not being counted.

The goal of the procedure was to have the process be both secure and transparent, according to Logan, Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy and Snohomish County Auditor Bob Terwilliger.

The counties will not be reporting results as they go, however, according to Terwilliger. Instead, counties will report results only when their respective tallies are complete.

In most cases that's expected to be by Dec. 23.

KING

Election officials across Washington state prepare for a second recount in the race for governor.

But the legal challenge launched by Democrats could also put off the day the results are known even farther.

The party has argued that some provisional ballots that were not counted in the initial tally or recount, should be re-examined. If the court rules with them, Logan said it would not likely change the result of the election since ballots were counted or disqualified based on state election law. But it would extend the counting process, Logan said.

It that case, he said, "it is almost guaranteed that at least for King County that this process will not completed by the end of the year."

Rossi, Gregoire on recount

Rossi said the Democrats' petition currently before the state Supreme Court that would allow more ballots to be counted is unfair.

"If the supreme court sides with Christine Gregoire, and they allow all these other ballots in that were deemed to be not legitimate ballots in the first count, its not a recount, its a new election," Rossi said.

Rossi also believes a hand recount won't necessarily give the most accurate result. He says machines are more accurate than humans.

But Gregoire says if a 42 vote margin doesn't justify a recount, what does?

"If not in this instance, as the law provides, then what would the instance be? 40 votes? I'm not doing anything that the law doesn't provide, (and) that hasn't been ratified in our state law for years."

The party is paying the heavy cost of the new recount, more than $700,000.

Reed's simple announcement to the 39 counties, signed in his office without fanfare, directs election departments to get started on Wednesday or Thursday. The count will take until Christmas week in some counties, especially King County, where a third of the voters live.

"Our assumption is that their job is to simply recount the ballots that were previously counted in the machine recount," Reed said in an interview. "However, in our rules we point out that the canvassing boards have the prerogative to take up and re-examine any problem ballots that have come to their attention ... and we are giving them the word that the Washington state Supreme Court will take up the Democrats' case on Thursday.

"But at this point, we are not authorizing them to go back and start all over again."

The Associated Press and KING 5 News reporters Chris Daniels and Elisa Hahn contributed to this report.