And the recount goes on

Like card players dealing solitaire, Spokane County elections workers began Friday sorting the ballots in the governor’s race into seven piles on the tables before them.

But the recount wasn’t a solitary game. Every stack they laid, every count they made was watched by at least one Republican volunteer and one Democratic volunteer.

Every tally for each candidate was double-checked by the “dealer” across the table.

If their tallies didn’t match, they each got to count again.

And when they turned up a ballot with markings outside the normal fill-in-the-oval for the candidate of your choice, even more people got involved.

A pair of elections supervisors, flanked by a Democratic volunteer leader and a Republican volunteer leader, picked up the ballot at the table. They trooped the ballot to another pair of elections officials who, under the watchful eye of a Republican lawyer and a Democratic lawyer, determined whether that ballot could clearly be counted for a particular candidate now, or would have to wait for review by the official Canvass Board.

“Unlike Florida, we have some very clean rules about what constitutes a vote,” County Auditor Vicky Dalton told the elections workers and volunteers before the recount began Friday morning.

The hand recount requires seven piles for the different variations on the ballot: a clear vote for Republican Dino Rossi; for Democrat Christine Gregoire; for Libertarian Ruth Bennett; for a write-in candidate; for no candidate, called an undervote; for more than one candidate, called an over vote; and for ballots with extra marks where the voter’s intent can be questioned.

Although some 50 people gathered in a large, open room, the recount was conducted in relative silence. Election workers were under strict orders not to compare counts until they were done, and volunteers were under orders not to talk to each other or the elections workers. If they needed anything, they were told to raise their hands.

A few minutes after the counting began, the hands went up at one table. Two ballots had ovals filled in for Gregoire, but marks near Rossi’s name or oval. Under full escort, they were taken from the table for inspection. After a full review, they were sent back to the table with instructions to count them with that precinct’s Gregoire pile.

But that wasn’t a gain for Gregoire, because, as Dalton noted, the machine would have read them as her ballots in previous tallies.

By the end of the day, elections workers had counted poll site ballots from about 125 precincts and turned up nine ballots that the canvassing board – which consists of Democrat Dalton, Spokane County Commissioner Phil Harris, a Republican, and a deputy prosecuting attorney – will review later. If all of those ballots were counted for the most likely interpretation, Rossi would have five, and Gregoire four, Republican observer Jon Wyss said.

But with tens of thousands of ballots left to count, it’s too soon for either side to be banking on a boost in the contest that finished with Rossi 42 votes ahead of Gregoire statewide.

Spokane County’s recount resumes Monday, and may be complete by Thursday, Dalton said.

Elsewhere around the state, Kitsap County, which finished its recount Thursday, recorded a net gain of 10 votes for Rossi, when 161 ballots that had marks too light for machines to read were caught by the hand recount.

Grant County workers found 52 ballots that hadn’t been counted in previous tallies. County Auditor Bill Varney said he didn’t know what happened, but apparently they were spread among the precincts and bypassed by the machines.

“That’s why you have recounts,” Varney said. They won’t change the outcome of the race, because the 52 votes mirrored the percentages in the first two counts.