Washington recount, and again, and again, and ....

Gregoire will be sworn in as the new governor of Washington. There is serious doubt as to the legitimacy of the voting, although I doubt you will see the same groups in Washington that were calling for legitimacy in the Ohio recount. In this election dems found a new method to effect the outcome. It is called search (for "lost" ballots) and recount. Here is a summary of what took place:

1. Election Day 2.9 million votes cast: Rossi won 241 votes
2. Automatic Machine recount- Rossi winner by 42 votes
3. Strongly Democratic King County finds 561 absentee ballots. (Many were previously rejected).
4. An additional 22 ballots found in King County
5. County works found 150 previously uncounted ballots, again King County
6. Manual Recount including newly acquired ballots Gregoire up by 129.

It has been reported that a number of provisional voters who may have not even been registered, put their ballots directly into a machine to be counted. Once this has been done their is no way to distinguish whether the ballot is valid or not. Also the final number of voters in King County outnumbers the eligible voters in the county by 1800. King County insists that the results are accurate to 99.9%. That just isn't good enough when the margin of victory is less than 0.1%.

In the end this will only help Republican prospects for the 2006 Senate seat.