Update [2004-12-10 18:17:13 by N in Seattle]:Seattle-area Kossacks, you may have missed my diary about our
Holiday Party for Progressives. Please try to join us tomorrow (Saturday) evening in Greenwood...
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As of last night, the Washington Secretary of State website was reporting on the hand recount results from 10 of the state's 39 counties. While news outlets have been pooh-poohing the results as insignificant -- as of this report, Rossi's margin had increased by one vote -- the real story may lie in the demonstration that hand recounts really can be more sensitive to actual voting results than those machines.
I've written quite a few dKos diaries about the WA gubernatorial race, including summary reports on both the initial count and the mandatory machine recount. I'll keep on writing these diaries until the hand recount is completed (by December 23, we're told), and maybe even beyond.
More details below the fold...
To review quickly, after the initial tally, Dino Rossi (R-reactionary hiding behind bland salesman visage) led Christine Gregoire (D-equivocating spineless DLC-type) by 261 votes out of nearly 2.9 million ballots; Ruth Bennett (L-gay marriage activist) received a bit over two percent of the vote. Following a mandatory machine recount of the ballots, Rossi's lead was even thinner, a mere 42 votes. The state Democratic party then requested a full-state hand recount, which got underway on Tuesday. Meanwhile, oral arguments in a Democratic lawsuit, asking that rejected ballots in all counties be reassessed for validity as part of the hand recount, will be heard by the Washington Supreme Court on Monday.
Four of the ten counties that completed their hand counts yesterday -- Ferry, Garfield, Lincoln, Pacific -- reported absolutely no difference between the machine recount and this hand count. Same number of votes for each of the three candidates, same total count of ballots tallied. According to the SoS's county-by-county review of voting systems, Ferry and Garfield both use ES&S Opscan 150 voting machines, while Lincoln and Pacific have BCCS Punchcard 228 systems. For the record, the ES&S 150 is used in four other counties, the BCCS 228 in seven others.
The other six reporting counties tallied small changes in their counts:
- Grays Harbor -- added 10 to Gregoire's total and 8 to Rossi's, while reviewing 2 more ballots than in the mandatory recount. Uses ES&S Opscan models 650 and 100.
- Jefferson -- added 8 Gregoire and 5 Rossi votes, reported identical total number of ballots as in first recount. Optech 4C-200 optical scan machines.
- Mason -- Gregoire +9, Rossi +12, Bennett -2, same ballot count as in mandatory recount. Another BCCS 228 punchcard county.
- Pend Oreille -- added 2 Rossi votes. Rectified earlier mistake in total number of ballots, reported reviewing 6 more than they had in the initial count. ES&S Opscan 650.
- Skamania -- Gregoire +1, Rossi +3, identical total ballot tally. Uses the Hart InterCivic eSlate touch-screen system, which is also found in Yakima County.
- Wahkiakum -- Rossi decreased by 1 vote, same total count as in mandatory recount. ES&S Opscan 115 machines
The changes appear small, but so too are these counties. Only 107,822 ballots, a mere 3.7% of the state total, had been hand-counted through last night. In this small subset of the state, the hand count observed 55 more assignable votes than in the mandatory recount while examining only 8 additional ballots. And in such a razor-thin race, even tiny numbers like that can mean a great deal.
Following a theme articulated by Democratic recount head David McDonald in an email that was forwarded to me and others last night, I calculated the proportion of "newly assignable" votes in the counties we've seen so far. Obviously, there were none in the four counties where all results were the same as in the mandatory recount. In four counties, the hand count revealed between 6 and 8 additional votes-for-a-candidate per 10,000 ballots. Overall in the 10 counties completed on Thursday night, the hand count revealed 5.1 new votes per 10,000 ballots.
That sounds like a small number. But extrapolating it to the statewide total from the mandatory recount, we're talking about almost 1500 newly-tallied votes for one candidate or another. Among that many ballots, small increases in county Gregoire percentages could easily reverse a 42-vote margin.
And this comes before the Supreme Court ruling on reassessing rejected ballots. I very much doubt that any of the counties that reported on Thursday has looked at those ballots. According to the Post-Intelligencer story quoted earlier, there are approximately 15,000 such disputed ballots in the state.
I'll end with a quote from that same P-I article. Oddly enough, it's a statement by a Republican operative:
"We've always said that with a by-the-rules recount Dino will still be governor-elect," said Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane.
She might be right. But it's nice of Lane to acknowledge that this hand recount is "by the rules". I hope she'll still say the same thing if the WA Supremes decide that "the rules" mean that a recount of ballots should include looking again at all submitted ballots, as the Democrats are seeking. And I hope she and her cronies will be as accepting of "the rules" if it turns out that Gregoire eases past Rossi in the hand recount.