County begins second and final hand recount
2004-12-11
by Dean A. Radford
King County Journal Reporter

Their fingers and their lips moved silently as they counted ballots. When their job is done, the state will have a new governor.

On Friday, King County joined the ranks of the 38 other counties in doing a hand recount of the closest governor's race ever in the state. It's the job of about 300 people to check ballots, separate them into piles and then start counting.

For some, the day got off to tentative start.

A slightly puzzled counter looked around the room as the teams at other tables dug into their boxes filled with ballots from a particular precinct.

``I think we're supposed to open it,'' he said, referring to their box.

The recount was carefully orchestrated to ensure no impropriety swayed the outcome. There's no margin for error or mischief, with only 42 votes separating the winner of the first two counts, Republican Dino Rossi, and Democrat Christine Gregoire, after a machine recount.

``It's a slow, monotonous process,'' said Dean Logan, the county's top elections official. But he was pleased as he oversaw the start of the actual counting Friday.

Other mysteries have been solved in that nondescript building on Boeing Field in Tukwila. For several months, its first floor housed the Green River Task Force and a bedroom for Gary Ridgway, the infamous Green River killer.

Elections officials pledged to make the recount as open and visible as possible, while protecting the sanctity of each ballot and the election itself.

Observers, reporters and counters surrendered their pencils and pens and were issued pens with green ink instead.

That way, there was no chance that someone could alter a ballot.

Nothing was to go on the floor in the counting areas. Also gone were coats, baggy pants, purses or fanny backs, which would be used to spirit away a ballot.

Only reporters could carry a notebook into the observation areas.

Observers are corralled in cordoned-off areas throughout the large work floor. They aren't allowed to talk to the counters, but can raise their hand and a county worker will address their concerns.

There are 17 observer stations with two chairs each, but many of the observers stood for a better view.

They were watching for anything out of the ordinary, a heated exchange between the partisan counters or a bevy of supervisors surrounding a table.

First the ballots were put into piles one for Rossi, one for Gregoire, one for Libertarian Ruth Bennett and others for overvotes (voting twice), undervotes (not voting), write-ins and those with ``issues.''

A hand or a ballot was hoisted into the air if a counter had a question. A supervisor would come over to help.

The three counters at each table had to agree on the intent of each voter. If they couldn't agree, the ballot was set aside and the county's Canvassing Board will make those difficult decisions over the next two weeks.

The ballots and the tallies were then returned to the box and sealed under the watchful eye of an election officer. The box was returned to a fenced-off area guarded by a sheriff's deputy, who allowed only authorized people in.

The tally will detect any discrepancy from the machine recount done previously. A hand recount is the final recourse for Gregoire to change the results, apparently short of legislative action.

The teams will work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with two 15-minute breaks and a 45-minute lunch. They'll make $12.70 an hour. The state Democratic Party is paying for the hand recount statewide, estimated to cost about $730,000.

Dan Brady, the lead observer for the Republican Party, said the party will have 25 to 30 observers at the facility each day. The Democrats will have a similar number.

The party's observers are looking especially for any counter who seems confused or ``anyplace where supervisors cluster,'' Brady said.

The goal is the ensure the process works as it's supposed to work, he said. The observers won't challenge any decision, but their leaders will pass on such information to state party officials and to Rossi, he said.

``We are strictly the eyes and ears,'' he said.

Brady echoed the party's frustrations over the manual recount.

``We feel the Republicans have to win statewide races three times to win here,'' he said.

And, he admits he's nervous.

Pat Behymer, a Republican observer, brought a pair of eagle eyes with her from Kent.

The counters she has seen ``have been very even-handed,'' she said.

Still, Behymer said, ``I am trying to look at each ballot,'' she said. But Brady said he wants observers to take a more global look at the proceedings before them.

Some of the tables are beyond easy view of observers. The option was to have observers from both parties stand directly at each table, an impractical solution because of the space required,

So each party picked a partisan counter for each table, who in essence is the observer standing over their shoulders.

Arija Flowers, an observer and spokeswoman for the Democratic Party, said the party's teams weren't necessarily looking for red flags, just something that broke the pattern of the routine count.

``It's going really well,'' she said.

But the count had just begun.

A Democratic observer, Rich Erwin of Mercer Island, said any problems he saw raised were resolved quickly and the whole process was ``stable.''

``I haven't seen a single discrepancy in terms of the counting,'' he said. But he said ``human nature things'' might yet play of role in the hand recount.

On Sunday, the crews will have counted the 334,154 poll votes, before turning to the nearly 565,000 absentee ballots. The pile may grow if the state Supreme Court allows the counting of several thousand absentee ballots statewide including about 2,500 in King County that have no signature or questionable signatures.

County election officials will attend the court's proceedings on Monday.

``We are confident we have followed the state law,'' said Bobbie Egan, a spokeswoman for the county's elections division.