Hand recount begins in gubernatorial race - Washington state

[seemslikeadream]

December 9, 2004

SHELTON, Wash. - The closest governor's election in Washington state history came down to crosshatch marks on scraps of paper Wednesday, as the state began recounting 2.9 million votes by hand to determine the winner.
The hardscrabble, rain-soaked timber town of Shelton even looked a bit like Palm Beach, Fla. - surely a first - as teams of vote-counters held up punch-card ballots used in Mason County and discussed hanging chads.

Unlike the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida, however, the first day of Washington's hand recount went smoothly. Six of the state's 39 counties started the recount Wednesday and the rest will start today.

Garfield County in Eastern Washington was the first to report results, and showed no change from the earlier machine recount. Mason County also finished its hand recount on Wednesday and reported a net gain of three votes for Republican Dino Rossi. Democrat Christine Gregoire got nine additional votes in the recount; Rossi got 12 additional votes, and Libertarian Ruth Bennett got two fewer votes.

more
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/12/09/d7.wa.govrecount.1209.html

[Egalitariat]

1. Hand recounts are just dumb. I guarantee if they hand recounted

2,900,000 votes 5000 times that they'd come up with 5000 different answers. And I bet the standard deviation wouldn't be small.

It's now a crap shoot for the Washington governorship.

[Wordie]

2. Better a machine that spits out the same (wrong) answer every time? n/t