COUNT 'TIL WE WIN:

Governor's Race So Close, Yet So Divisive: Washington Republican Dino Rossi is up by 42 votes. But disputes persist over the recount and votes never counted. (Sam Howe Verhovek, December 19, 2004, LA Times)

As things stand now, Republican Dino Rossi is the governor-elect, by 42 votes of the nearly 2.9 million cast, a hairbreadth margin of 0.0015%. If the contest were a 100-meter dash, Rossi would be ahead of Democrat Christine Gregoire by about 1 millimeter.

But the race is not over, and an unprecedented hand recount of the previous machine-fed tallies has unearthed roughly 500 additional votes for each candidate — as well as a mysterious trove of some 735 still-sealed, never-before-counted absentee ballots here in largely Democratic King County.

Those votes, which county officials say went unopened due to a computer malfunction compounded by a clerical error, could be the key to a victory for Gregoire, the state attorney general, over Rossi, a state senator.

Democrats say, "Let's count all the votes." Republicans smell a rat.

It's probably too much to ask that it's called Box 13.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 19, 2004 8:49 AM