I'm quite out of the habit of doing the Wictory Wednesday post, but the election is not over yet. In Washington State, the governor's race continues on. As of right now, Republican Rossi leads Democrat Gregiore by 42 votes. A second recount is in progress and one party sued to have disallowed ballots reconsidered. Just days ago, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that local canvassing boards are not to reconsider rejected ballots.

However, the Democratic bastion of King County very well may consider 595 ballots they claim were not included due to worker error:

In the ongoing saga of the closest governor's race in Washington state history, the state Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a motion to force county canvassing boards to reconsider every rejected absentee and provisional ballot during the hand recount.

"Ballots are to be 'retabulated' only if they have been previously counted or tallied," Chief Justice Gerry Alexander wrote in the unanimous decision. The ruling is available online, at http://www.courts.wa.gov.

Clear enough. But at the same time, King County elections officials said as many as 595 ballots had not been counted because of mistakes by election workers.

On Tuesday night, an election official said 22 more ballots had been found in addition to the previous 573.

King County Elections Director Dean Logan said those ballots should be counted, and the county canvassing board will decide their fate on Wednesday.

The two events have a lot of people wondering why King County can add those ballots to the hand recount when they haven't been "previously counted," in the words of the court.

The answer lies in state law. Existing law gives county canvassing boards the power to recanvass, or reconsider, any ballots during a count or a recount. They just have to do it before the election is certified. While the election results from the first, machine recount were certified Nov. 30, the hand recount results have not yet been certified, so the window is still open for county canvassing boards to reconsider ballots.

A radio talk show host has noted that misplaced ballots have now been found 7 times since the original election results have been tallied. Allowing ballots to be admitted this late in the game opens the whole system up to fraud. However, some do not care how much damage they cause, as long as their candidate wins.

One final thought on recounts: If the election results do not match the recount, which number is actually correct? Example: If the result is 501-499 and the recount yields a tally of 498-502, which number is actually more accurate? In our system, the latter one is - soley for the reason that it was the most recent. It is not as if the actual vote is some mystic value which we can only approximate. There is an actual correct result.

My point is that if two different counts give two different results (assuming no ballots have been added or tampered with) then which set of numbers is correct (or at least the most correct)? I don't think you can know unless you recount until you get the same number twice, which is an unreasonable use of time and money.

Rossi has already won twice. Unfortunately, the votes "found" during the third round of counting will probably swing the election to the other party. In other words, it appears that he has won the victory, but not the office.

UPDATE: The Seattle Times has gotten into the act by publishing a list of those whose ballots have been rejected. Anything to help their candidate win.

More indepth coverage of this issue can be found at Sound Politics.

Wictory Wednesday Blogroll:

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