Gregoire gains ground in count
In Snohomish County, Gregoire picked up 119 votes to Rossi's 75. Rossi still leads by 74.

By Jerry Cornfield
Everett Herald Writer    17 December 2004

In the marathon race for governor, Democrat Christine Gregoire on Thursday closed the gap on Republican Dino Rossi when she picked up a chunk of votes in Snohomish County.

Gregoire gained 119 votes in the hand recount to Rossi's 75, a net gain of 44 votes for the attorney general, according to results certified by the Snohomish County Canvassing Board.

Most of the focus is on King County and the fate of 573 disputed ballots. Lawyers for the state Republican Party will try to block King County election workers from processing or counting those ballots until more investigation is done. A hearing was expected today in a Tacoma court room to hear the GOP challenge.

It's becoming clearer that that batch could determine the winner in this unprecedented gubernatorial duel. Rossi, the former state senator, won the state's Nov. 2 election over Gregoire, the attorney general, by 261 votes. The narrow win triggered a state-wide, mandatory machine recount, which Rossi won by 42 votes.

That lead, coupled with his totals thus far in the hand recount, gave him an 74-vote advantage as of Thursday night.

King County is a Democratic stronghold in which Gregoire won about 58 percent of votes cast. If she won a similar margin among the disputed ballots alone, that could be enough to propel her into the lead.

In Snohomish County, Rossi remains the overall choice, 145,628 votes to Gregoire's 139,189.

But the results of the hand recount favored Gregoire, reflecting where the candidates drew their most electoral support. She won 51 percent of mail ballot votes while Rossi won 53 percent of those cast on touch-screen machines on Election Day.

The increase in votes in the recount came solely from mail ballots; the results of votes cast electronically did not change. Thus, Gregoire could be expected to pass Rossi.

In King County, the state Republican Party wants to keep workers from separating the ballots from their outer envelopes because, Chairman Chris Vance said, that makes it far more difficult to determine where they came from, whether they were stored correctly and why they were not counted previously.

Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt blasted the legal action.

"Let's be clear: Dino Rossi is the accidental governor-elect. The only reason he was in the lead at the end of the last count is because of King County's mistake," he said.

"Now that the mistakes are being fixed, they want to stop valid votes from being counted."