I am curious to see if Rossi has a sudden change of heart about tallying those King Co. ballots.  Bad odds are better than no odds.

We at Progressive Majority Washinigton have just set up a handy web action to use if you like.

But it appears the system worked.  There were over 2,750,000 votes cast in the governor's race in Washington.  The first tally said Rossi was 261 votes ahead.  This triggered an automatic recount which the machines said resulted in only a 42 vote margin.

The law said a hand recount could proceed if paid for by the Greogoire campaign and it did foot the bill.  In every country each ballot was reviewed by a Demcorat, a Republican and an independent observer.  All three had to agree on the vote for the ballot to be counted.

After the hand recount it would appear at least 2,000 or so more votes were found casts in the gubernatorial race that the machines missed at least one or both times through (not even counting the absentee ballots set aside in King County that may yet be counted by court order).;

Now, out of 2.75 million plus votes it ends up with an eight vote margin it would appear.  It could have been eight votes for Gregorie (my preference) or Rossi -- but the process has worked.  It was done in accordance with the rules of the game (memo to U.S. Supreme Court on this one re 2000, let the rules of the game be played out, don't stop them in mid-game), the final recount was paid for by the entity which asked for the recount and tireless workers across the state counted all the votes and in the process found many still had not been counted by the machines either the 1st or 2nd time around so thankfully there was a third count to enfranchise those voters uncounted the first two times.

And if this episode doesn't send the message to people that it is important to vote, nothing will.  There are reasons we take the time to vote early or absentee or stand in lines on Election Day itself.  There are those occasions when every vote really does count.  They may be rare but this is as good an example as can be.

Also listen to Republican candidate Dino Rossi's double standard on litigation at our Elections page.

Democrats need to keep their spitis up!

I predict a "Democrats stole the election meme" out by 5pm tomorrow, regardless of the State Supreme Court's decision on the legality of the 723 ballots in question...

So not only do they have a new governor but one hell of a war chest to boot to fight the smear attacks and entrench themselves in all counties

Now we'll see if she will govern from the left or from the center.

This should give Gregoire a somewhat more convincing margin, but the final outcome remains to be seen.

The court victory is a reversal of a lower court's ruling for the GOP.

The Lesbian sitting in the middle of the living room: Ruth Bennett-the Libertarian party candidate who siphoned off nearly 100,000(96,000+)  votes. Attacking Gregoire from the left, Bennett criticized Gregoire for not speaking out loudly enough in defense of gay marriage. My Seattle dem friends thought Gregoire ran a somewhat lackluster campaign, but partisan bickering is what led to Bennett's candidacy and ultimately, this squeaker victory.
I gush when I see this behavior on the other side.
I was hoping a pro-life candidate would third party Arlen Specter.
I'm happy there have been so many positive comments about what Gregoire's win means to us, and what hell a Rossi win would have wrought.
Remember this as a cautionary tale when groups and individuals are threatening to bolt if they don't get everything they want.

Also, the planned negative attacks on Rossi by unions and others did not happen because resources were shifted to try to help Kerry in the swing states.

Gregoire should have won in a landslide in an increasingly Democratic state.
She nearly lost because she failed to energize her base and tried to play to much to the middle.