Scenes from a completed recount

Dino, meet Dario.
A few hours after Secretary of State Sam Reed ordered a statewide hand recount in the Washington governor’s race, I was on the phone with Gov.-elect Dino Rossi’s worst nightmare: a Republican who lost an election after a hand recount.
Dario Carrara, a small business owner, went to bed Nov. 2 believing he’d won a New Hampshire House seat. But his Democratic opponent, Claudia Chase, filed for a recount. So on Nov. 19, Carrara watched his 31-vote victory turn into a four-vote defeat.
Though disappointed with the result, Carrara supports the system. He watched about 40 percent of the hand count and believes the rules were followed fairly. And although seals were damaged on boxes holding votes from two of the district’s towns, Carrara concluded they had not been broken. When it came time to wrestle over a dozen contested votes – enough to turn the race back in his favor – he ruled out a challenge after the secretary of state advised him the ballots were likely invalid.
In essence, Dario Carrara supported democracy by refusing to fight or disparage a recount process that played out according to clear election rules. It’s an example Dino Rossi would do well to emulate.
What’s most astonishing to me is that Carrara conceded, even though he lost on a technicality that would make an election lawyer drool. Here’s what happened: New Hampshire allows straight-ticket voting. But if a person chooses that option and then votes in an individual race, that vote overrules the straight-ticket choice.
The system works fine when someone votes straight Republican, say, and picks a Democrat in one race. However, several voters in this district picked the straight Republican option and also cast a ballot for one Republican House candidate – failing to pick Carrara for the other seat. Because two positions were up for grabs, it’s logical to infer those straight-ticket Republican voters would prefer Carrara for the second one. But New Hampshire law allows no such mind-reading. So Carrara lost enough ballots initially counted under the forbidden standard to give his opponent a recount victory. Elections have been litigated over much smaller issues.
But Carrara refused to impugn the recount just because he disliked the result. “I think it was a valid process,” he says. “I really do have faith in the people counting the ballots, and in the secretary of state. It’s a good system.” (Of course, his district had no punch-card ballots to contend with.)
Recount victor Claudia Chase, a textile artisan and loom manufacturer, believes in the system as well. And she says Democrat Christine Gregoire was right to ask for a hand count in Washington. “It’s not about the candidate, it’s about the supporters,” Rep. Chase says. “That candidate has an obligation to her supporters to request a recount.”
And if by chance Gregoire should come out ahead, should her legitimacy be questioned? “No, because hand recounts are so accurate, and you can have witnesses” from both parties, Chase says. “It’s impossible to cheat because the observers would say, ‘You can’t do that.’ The recount is a wonderful process. It’s meaningful. It’s very controlled.”
Even so, the New Hampshire Democrat understands why Rossi keeps attempting to cast doubt on Washington’s hand count. “The person who’s being challenged does not want a recount, period,” Chase says with a chuckle.
As for Carrara, he might run for the New Hampshire House again in two years. And with the integrity he showed this time around, I bet he’ll win if he does.