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Banned
Governor race may end up in court
By Keith Ervin and Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times staff reporters
The Washington State Democratic Party filed suit against King County this morning for not allowing the party to inspect a list of voters whose provisional ballots might be thrown out.
"Uneven and unfair standards are being implemented across the state in the handling of provisional ballots," said state Democratic chairman Paul Berendt. "Many votes go unheeded because of the wrong-headed approach for provisional ballots."
A hearing on the suit was scheduled for this afternoon in King County Superior Court.
In response to the suit, King County elections director Dean Logan said he was only following the law in the way the ballots are counted, and he disputed assertions from the Democratic Party that many ballots aren't counted because their signatures don't match voter registration forms. Most of the ballots aren't counted because officials can't find them on registration rolls, he said.
Provisional ballots are used when voters cast ballots outside their regular polling place or when there are uncertainties about someone's eligibility to vote. They also include voters who requested absentee ballots, but didn't receive them so had to vote at the polls.
The thousands of provisional ballots left to count in King County could determine the outcome of the close gubernatorial race between Democrat Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi.
So far, King County has found signature problems with more than 900 of the provisional ballots. The Democratic Party wants access to those rejected ballots to contact the voter and let them defend their vote, but King County Elections said they are prevented by law from releasing that information.
"It's not surprising the parties and candidates are scrutinizing this process," Logan said this morning. "That is their right." He said if he loses the lawsuit, the county will release the information.
In a letter sent to King County officials yesterday, State Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt accused Republican vote-count observers of intimidating and harassing King County election workers processing the provisional ballots.
State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance denied that charge. And while county election officials were worried enough about the atmosphere to post a sheriff's deputy in the office where the ballots are being counted, Dean Logan, the director of records, elections and licensing services, called Berendt's claim "an overstatement."
The governor's race remains extraordinarily tight.
Rossi yesterday gained ground for the third straight day and holds a nearly 3,600-vote lead over Gregoire. With more than 2.7 million votes counted, Rossi's lead is just over one-tenth of 1 percent. Only two counties - Pierce and Whitman - tallied ballots yesterday.
Nearly two-thirds of Washington's counties are scheduled to count more absentee and provisional ballots today. Statewide, the counties estimate they have more than 80,000 ballots left to count before next Wednesday's election certification deadline.
Democrats, who say King County has declined to release the names of provisional voters whose votes it doesn't plan to count, want to contact those voters and encourage them to provide information to the county that could establish their eligibility to vote. Some other counties have released lists of those voters, Berendt said.
Democrats want every possible provisional ballot counted in pro-Gregoire King County, in part because many provisional voters are college students who are expected to vote for Gregoire.
"The bottom line is this," Berendt said yesterday: "The Rossi people seem to be able to chase their ballots in the Rossi counties, but the Democratic Party is being forbidden to chase our ballots in our counties due to rulings by local election officials."
Berendt argued that King County is treating provisional ballots differently than it treats absentee ballots. If there's a problem counting an absentee ballot King County contacts the voter to give them the opportunity to fix the problem, but doesn't offer the same thing for disqualified provisional voters, said Berendt.
But Logan said the two voters are different: the county knows the absentee voter is registered because it mailed out an absentee ballot, while it doesn't know whether those who vote provisional ballots are actually registered.
Logan said the federal Help America Vote Act prohibits the county from releasing the names of provisional voters who failed to sign their ballot envelopes or whose signatures have been challenged by election workers. He said he has not been able to confirm that some counties are releasing provisional voters' names.
County officials have found signature problems with about 929 provisional ballots. Those ballots will be counted only if voters sign another form by 4:30 p.m. Tuesday. Each voter who cast a provisional ballot at a county polling place Nov. 2 was given an access number to check online or by phone whether the vote was counted.
But King County ran out of provisional ballot envelopes in some precincts and voters were not given tracking numbers. Logan said the only way for that voter to know if his vote was counted is to call the King County Elections Office.
He said all voters whose votes weren't counted will be notified by mail after the election is certified, too late to affect this elections. The election is to be certified on Tuesday and it is uncertain how the lawsuit filed today will affect that.
Vance acknowledged the GOP has obtained lists of those disqualified provisional voters in some counties and is calling them to remind them to submit new signatures.
Vance said he knows of no serious problems in the handling of provisional ballots in any county. "If we thought that a county was truly doing something wrong or improper or illegal, we wouldn't hesitate to try to defend our rights in court," Vance said. "But I hope that this doesn't turn into Florida, where you start just getting sort of desperation lawsuits filed."
Based on recent trends in the vote count, Vance said, "The math is in our favor. ... The Democrats can add up columns, and they don't work for them unless there is a big shift in the provisional ballots, so clearly they're nervous."
King County estimates about 25,000 more ballots - mostly provisional - remain to be counted. That's just over 29 percent of the almost 85,000 votes yet to be counted statewide.
Dozens of election workers continued to pore over provisional ballots yesterday to determine whether voters were eligible and whether their ballot-envelope signatures matched signatures on their registration cards.
Tensions between Republican and Democratic observers have been high.
In his letter to Logan, Berendt accused Republican observers of attempting "to skew the election results in King County through harassment and intimidation of elections workers."
Berendt said as many as 12 Republican observers were in the room at a time, sometimes gathering around workers, looking at their computer screens and ballot envelopes, challenging signature matches, watching through binoculars and disregarding requests to stand back.
Vance said it was "flat-out not true" that some Republican observers were out of line.
"Our observers are complying with all procedures and regulations laid down by the King County staff," he said.
Election officials confirmed they had problems with some observers. A sheriff's deputy has been in the room where provisional ballots are screened since Tuesday at the request of those officials.
Officials said they insisted on keeping observers at a distance so workers wouldn't be distracted and so observers wouldn't see confidential information such as voters' date of birth.
Republican observer Amos Leviant of Bellevue said the observer process is irrelevant if observers can't get close enough to see what workers are doing.
"I think they are very defensive about us ... seeing what they are doing," Leviant said. "If I was them, I would say, 'Guys, feel free. Just don't talk to the guys and don't disturb them.' "
Logan is resisting both the Republicans' desire to see ballot-processing close up and the Democrats' wish to see a list of provisional voters. "What we need to be careful about is staying focused on the administration of the election, and not allowing either side to influence or to change the procedures that we would normally use to conduct the election," he said
The Seattle Times
Our governors race is tighter than a drum head. Rossi is a rather moderate republican and I don't necissarily think he'd be a terrible governor but this crap about lawsuits is getting real old real quick.
Maybe you don't get it...I mean...isn't everybody worth eleventy-jillion dollars a year? 
