Thurston County finishes

BRAD SHANNON THE OLYMPIAN   15 December 2004

Thurston County finished its hand tabulation of votes in Washington's governor's race Tuesday, and certification is planned for 11 a.m. today.
The civil and uneventful process added five votes to Christine Gregoire's total and two to Dino Rossi's, county Auditor Kim Wyman said. Libertarian Ruth Bennett had no change in vote total.

Statewide, Rossi led by 42 votes after a machine recount, and the manual count has boosted his margin to 103 statewide, but key Gregoire-friendly counties such as King haven't yet reported results.

"Probably the most notable thing in Thurston County was how civil and respectful the recount process was," Wyman said of the 31/2-day process.

All told, teams of three counters tabulated 113,996 ballots. That total was two ballots more than a machine recount turned up last month, and it gave Gregoire 58,960 votes, Rossi 49,415 and Bennett 2,574.

Another 142 votes, which triggered questions during the hand recount, now must go before the county canvassing board, led by Wyman and representatives of the county prosecutor and county commission, at 11 a.m. today.

The public event, which includes certifying the hand count results, is in the county elections shop, 2905 29th Ave. S.W., in Tumwater's Mottman Industrial Park.

The hand count was meticulous with teams of three counters, including one Republican and one Democratic appointee, counting batches of votes, usually by precinct.

In each case, a team would sort their precinct stack into five piles those showing chad No. 78 punched out for Gregoire; chad No. 79 for Rossi; chad No. 80 for Libertarian candidate Ruth Bennett; those with multiple or "over-votes"; and those with "under-votes."

Then each person in a team would count the ballots until their numbers agreed exactly for the precinct.

Then their numbers were compared against the machine recount total for that precinct; if the numbers differed, they had to count again. In some cases, a ballot was counted six different times.

If one counter raised a question about a ballot, the ballot was sent off to the canvassing board. Wyman, the lone Republican on the canvassing board, said that's why 142 ballots will be evaluated today, although she expects few, if any, votes will be added to Tuesday's count.

One Democratic counter, Karyn Lindberg, described the vote-counting process in an e-mail to The Olympian, saying it was a good one and that the outcome was more accurate than a machine count.

"It was an interesting experience to do this work, which was tedious but which I believe produced real value for our community," Lundberg wrote.

"I believe community members need to know just how this recount took place and that those who did the work feel they did a better job than the machines."

Wyman said vote counters appeared to agree that their manual tallies were more accurate than machines, and she agreed with that assessment. She based that view on watching for nearly four days as vote-counters were "meticulously going ballot by ballot" and getting numbers that matched up.