Hand recount starts in Washington governor's race

REBECCA COOK, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, December 8, 2004
 
SHELTON, Wash. (AP)

The closest governor's election in Washington state history came down to crosshatch marks on scraps of paper Wednesday, as the state began recounting 2.9 million votes by hand to determine the winner.

The hardscrabble, rain-soaked timber town of Shelton even looked a bit like Palm Beach, Fla. surely a first as teams of vote-counters held up punchcard ballots used in Mason County and discussed hanging chads.

Unlike the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida, though, the first day of Washington's hand recount went smoothly. Six of the state's 39 counties started the recount Wednesday and the rest will start Thursday.

The first county to report results showed no change from the earlier machine recount. Garfield County in Eastern Washington reported results in the early afternoon after hand-counting 1,293 votes: 65 percent for Republican Dino Rossi, 33 percent for Democrat Christine Gregoire and 2 percent for Libertarian Ruth Bennett.

Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court scheduled a Monday hearing on the state Democratic Party's motion to reconsider ballots that were previously invalidated.

Whether Washington will have a governor by the Jan. 12 inauguration is anyone's guess. Rossi, a 45-year-old commercial real estate agent, won the first count by 261 votes against Gregoire, a three-term Attorney General who was initially favored to win. After a machine recount, Rossi won by 42 votes. The hand recount is the final tally allowed by state law.

The recount went quickly in Shelton, where workers were fueled by coffee, soda and cookies supplied by the county. Sitting at a folding table under fluorescent lights, Republican Lloyd Haskins Sr. held up ballots for Democrat Carl Brownstein to see, and they both marked their running totals on white scrap paper.

In the interest of fairness, each team of two vote-counters and one recorder included one person recruited by the local Democratic Party and one recruited by the GOP. They got paid $7.16 an hour, though the pay varied by county.

Both Brownstein, a high school teacher, and Haskins, who is unemployed, got involved in politics this year because they felt strongly about the presidential election. They never thought they would end up counting votes for the governor's race in December.

"This was beyond anyone's imagination," Haskins said.

Political observers hovered over their shoulders as they counted, watching their every move.

"At the end I really wanted to turn around and tell people to go away," Brownstein confessed. He was surprised there was so little controversy with the 1,200 ballots they counted they asked the auditor about one or two ballots but most of it was cut-and-dry, he said.

One of the observers was John Teranova of Olympia, a substitute teacher. He said the recounting he saw seemed orderly and by the rules.

"It's encouraging to see people of different political backgrounds come together to try to have an acceptable count we all believe in," Teranova said. A Democrat, he said the recount will make him more confident of the results if Rossi wins.

"Forty-two votes out of 2.9 million you just have to be really sure," he said.

Most of Washington state's counties use optical scan ballots, two use electronic touch-screen voting and 14 use punchcards. The rule with punchcards is that if two corners of the hole are punched through, it counts. Anything less doesn't count.

Clark, Skamania, Garfield, San Juan and Benton counties also started their recounts Wednesday. By state law, all the counties must begin by Thursday. Officials in King County, the state's largest, have estimated it will take them until Dec. 22 to finish. If the Supreme Court grants the Democrats' motion to reconsider previously invalidated ballots, the recount could stretch into 2005.

"We're pretty much assured of Dino winning again if we have a by-the-book hand recount," said Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane, who added: "It would be lovely to have a Christmas that is recount-free."