Rossi leads race by 19 votes

In a sign of just how close the Washington governor’s race is, Republicans and Democrats spent part of Tuesday calling absentee voters who neglected to sign the envelopes holding their ballots, hoping to find an edge in the dwindling number of uncounted votes.

A few unexpected votes for either candidate in each county could be the difference between victory and defeat. As of 7:30 p.m., Republican Dino Rossi had a lead over Democrat Chris Gregoire of 19 votes out of nearly 2.8 million cast – a difference of .000067 percent.

“We’re doing this all over the state,” said Spokane County GOP Chairwoman Robin Ball, as volunteers went down a list of voters with unsigned ballots from the county elections office.

Democrats were also searching for voters who had failed to sign absentee or provisional ballots. In Spokane County, Elections Manager Paul Brandt said Democrats brought in an inch-high stack of affidavits Tuesday from voters they had contacted from a list of unsigned ballots.

But only nine had signatures that hadn’t already been sent in, Brandt added.

Counties are required by law to contact absentee voters who fail to sign the envelope on their mail-in ballots, and ask them to mail in an affidavit or come in, he said. Such ballots remain in unopened envelopes and are not counted unless a signature is provided

Every election has some mail-in ballots that voters neglect to sign. This year, the county started with about 700 such “missing signature” ballots.

What’s unusual, however, is to have outside groups like the political parties taking the affidavits to the voters, and bringing them in.

“Nothing in the statutes authorizes a third party to get into that process. But there’s nothing that prohibits a third party from getting into that process,” Brandt said.Voters who failed to sign the envelope that came with their mail-in ballot have until today to either return a signed affidavit sent to them by the county or go to the Elections Office at 1033 W. Gardner and sign the envelope, Brandt said. Republicans said they were willing to take the affidavits to voters who wanted to sign them, or transport voters to the office if that’s what they wanted.

In King County on Tuesday, Republicans tried to head off the counting of hundreds of provisional ballots that Democratic volunteers have “saved” by tracking down voters and getting them to correct errors with their signatures.

State GOP chairman Chris Vance said those votes shouldn’t be accepted. The signature on a ballot, he said, should only be compared to the original voter registration form, not to an affidavit gathered by partisan volunteers.

“This is wrong,” he said. “The potential for fraud here is obvious.”

State Democratic Chairman Paul Berendt countered in a press release: “Going to court to stop ballots from being counted is disgraceful. Dino Rossi wants a court to stop ballots from being counted because he knows that the ballot count isn’t going his way.”

A judge rejected the GOP argument, however, and Vance acknowledged Tuesday that Republicans were rushing to copy Democrats’ tactics.

“We were not out there collecting signatures on affidavits, because we didn’t think it was legal,” he said. “Now we are.”

The fight in King County revolves around provisional ballots that are often cast by people who show up at the wrong voting station, come in because they lost or did not receive their absentee ballot, or don’t show up on the voting rolls for some other reason. They must be signed by the voter so that signatures can be compared with county records.

A King County judge ruled last week that unsigned provisional ballots should be treated the same as unsigned absentee ballots.

But Brandt said that ruling doesn’t affect Spokane County, because all provisional ballots cast at local polling stations on Nov. 2 were signed.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the county had 210 ballots on its “missing signature” list. Those who get signatures by today will be added to the totals before the county certifies its election results as required by state law.

With the margin so close, election officials are finding that their errors are the stuff of much partisan speculation. Grays Harbor County Auditor Vern Spatz found himself under scrutiny from party officials, newspaper reporters and TV crews Tuesday after the county discovered that one or two computer diskettes had apparently been loaded into an election computer twice. The county notified party officials and rushed to recount every ballot.

The problem was discovered when the county’s voter-turnout number rose higher than 90 percent – an improbably high even in a hot election year.

Spatz said the problem wasn’t the scanners or the computer. Human error?

“I didn’t say that,” he said, “but that’s a good conclusion, I think.”

But the upshot is likely to be a 508-vote swing in favor of Gregoire. That would normally be a hiccup in a 2.8-million vote statewide race. This time, it could well be the final margin of victory.

Spatz said the recounting was slowed Tuesday because one of the scanners blew a sensor.

“When it rains, it pours,” he said.

The closeness of the race gives political junkies fits.

“I am officially out of the gubernatorial vote-count prediction business,” Web logger Stefan Sharkansky wrote Monday night, throwing up his hands after days of posting complex spreadsheets suggesting who would win.