We're better off if Gregoire wins independent of the uncounted votes.

[smartvoter]

I think every vote should be counted, but if roles were reversed here and, during a recount in a Republican dominated county a bunch of ballots turned up that were not counted, the reason would not matter, we'd be suspicious of the event. At least I know I would, and given that I'm a relative lightweight in terms of how events are read into out here, it's a safe bet I'd be in the majority.

If Gregoire wins WA regardless of those votes, which it looks like she will when King County reports, there won't be any gray areas to fuel a big movement on the Republican side claiming we created new votes to steal the election. Will some say we did anyway? Yes. But without something to point to that can be easily spun as suspicious, it won't get anywhere in the general public.

Simply put, it's cleaner for us if we win independent of those votes. For this reason, I'm happy it looks like we're going to win regardless of their inclusion, although I do think they should be counted. (If mine was in there, I'd want it counted.)

[liberalpragmatist]

1. You're right if the tables were turned we would be suspicious. We shouldn'

I value intellectual consistency. If something like this does happen we need to be sure to stay true to the higher ideals we profess to hold. If a Republican won because uncounted ballots were discovered, they should count unless there is evidence they are fraudulent.

[claudiajean]

2. Sadly, Chris will probably not win without the 723 missed ballots.

I would not recommend any expectation of gaining a great number of votes in King during the manual recount.

The additional votes from the machine count to the hand count in the other counties' tallies are due to further inspection of the ballots for the manual recount (the other counties did their first machine recount without a re-inspection of the ballots.)

King, however, inspected all of their ballots for voter intent problems before running the ballots for the machine recount. So it is unlikely that many more votes will be harvested in King as a part of the manual recount.

Basically, IMHO, if we don't get to count the 723 ballots that King County Elections screwed up and missed in the first and second counts, we will probably not be able to bridge the 50 vote difference between Rossi and Gregoire now.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.

[Stevepol]

3. why is it ever wrong to count legally cast ballots?

If the Repubs had found some ballots that had been overlooked somehow, I would want those ballots to be counted. If the ballots that have turned up were legally cast and if it was just the incompetence on the part of the elections people, then why should they not be counted? Repubs of a certain kind will complain no matter what happens if the result is unpalatable to them. The principle should be: if votes are legally cast they should be counted. And a recount is the perfect place to count them. Why do you recount in the first place if not to find out where mistakes were made and correct them????