GOP continues campaign for revote

OLYMPIA – Trying to build momentum for an election challenge, the head of the state Republican Party said Tuesday that Republicans believe that “hundreds and hundreds” of ballots were counted incorrectly.

GOP Chairman Chris Vance said he also believes the party will soon be able to show examples of “dead people who voted, felons who voted, (and) people who voted twice.”

“It’s not over,” Vance said of the race, which Republican Dino Rossi lost after three counts by just 129 votes. He had narrowly won the first two counts.

“If we can prove this election was flawed to the point where you can’t really know who won, then there must be a new election,” Vance said. “We are day by day building that case.”

Several election officials, however, say that they’ve so far seen no indications of the sort of major problems that would spur a second election

“Based on the information that we’ve seen and results certified to us by the counties, we are comfortable with the results,” said Nick Handy, director of elections for Secretary of State Sam Reed. “We’re not aware of any activity that would rise to the level of fraud or serious discrepancies.”

“I think the election went really well,” said Corky Mattingly, Yakima County auditor and president of the state’s association of county auditors. “We all stand with our count.”

Vance said Republicans are spending $50,000 on a weeklong, statewide radio ad campaign telling voters that the election was “a certified mess” and urging them to demand a revote.

“I think it’s important that the public understand that this election is not over and that there’s an ongoing effort to get a fair election,” he said.

Republicans are planning a rally at the state capitol on Tuesday morning, the day before Gregoire is scheduled to be sworn in.

“Democracy worked in the Ukraine,” Vance said. “Perhaps it needs to be practiced here.”

Democratic Governor-elect Christine Gregoire bristled Tuesday at what she called Republicans’ “high-pitched rhetoric.”

“I think it’s time for us to move on,” she said. “I think the public is tired of this.”

If Republicans challenge the election – as it looks like they will – they have two choices: the courts or the Democrat-controlled Legislature. Not surprisingly, the top Republican lawmakers are holding open the possibility of the Legislature voting for a runoff election.

“The people of this state have clearly lost confidence in our election system,” said House Minority Leader Bruce Chandler, R-Granger. “The truth of the matter is we don’t know who won that election and we never will.”

Top Democrats don’t like the idea.

“In the end, you follow the process and the one with the most votes wins,” said Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane. “… I don’t believe that anybody seriously thinks that there’s some kind of conspiracy or fraud out there.”

Gregoire has spent the past few days hiring key top-level staff, preparing to move into the governor’s mansion and poring over the state budget. On Sunday, her youngest daughter bought a dress for the Jan. 12 inaugural ball.

Gregoire said “there is absolutely no evidence – none whatsoever – to support” Republicans’ suggestions of major election errors or fraud. Vance and other Republican leaders have blasted some counties, particularly King County, for not yet being able to match up the number of votes with the names of voters. King County is working on reconciling those lists now, with a report due out at 3 p.m. Friday.

Republicans have scheduled a press conference for this morning in Bellevue, with two witnesses scheduled to detail problems they saw. One of those witnesses is the rarely mentioned third candidate for governor: Libertarian Ruth Bennett, who got more than 60,000 votes in the razor-thin race. Vance said she and a temporary election employee in King County, Joe O’Donnell, will talk about problems they saw with ballot security, lack of standards for judging questionable votes, changing procedures and problems with provisional ballots.

One key Republican complaint is how provisional ballots were counted, particularly in King County, a Democratic stronghold. Such ballots are given to people not listed in a polling place’s book. The voter fills out the ballot and an envelope, and is then supposed to hand it back to poll workers. If they can later verify that person as a registered legal voter, then the vote counts.

But in “hundreds and hundreds” of cases, Vance says, those voters wrongly fed those ballots into polling place tabulating machines, instead of turning them in.

“These votes are illegal,” he said.

A spokeswoman for King County’s elections department said some errors will likely turn up during the reconciliation process. But she said the safeguards – such as having Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians staffing polling places – minimize such problems.

“I think it’s safe to say that we will see some administrative errors at the polling places,” said Bobbie Egan. “This is a human process. But that doesn’t mean there’s any evidence of fraud at all.”

Most counties will not be able to completely reconcile votes with voter names, she said, since some of those voters are domestic-violence victims whose addresses are hidden under state law. Others are military voters who cast a federal write-in ballot, which allows them to register and vote on the same day.

Military votes are a large part of Republicans’ focus. The radio ad features a Snohomish man whose son, a Marine wounded in Fallujah, Iraq, couldn’t vote because he didn’t get his ballot on time.

But Handy, the state elections director, said that nearly all military ballots were in the mail by Oct. 8. And unlike regular voters, military voters don’t have to get their ballot postmarked by the Nov. 2 Election Day. As long as those ballots were signed by Nov. 2 and arrived at election offices by Nov. 17, Handy said, they counted.

“Our best understanding is that most of them made it back in time,” he said.

Military voters had several chances to vote, Egan said. King County emailed and faxed ballots to voters overseas. Some troops used federal write-in ballots.

“We’ve spent many a night faxing ballots to our military servicemen overseas,” she said. “To say that we didn’t make that effort is completely false.”