News on Washington Recount
The Washington Democratic Party claims that its candidate Christine Gregoire leads Republican Dino Rossi by eight votes after a hand recount. The AP has this report. Rossi had led by 261 votes after the first count and by 42 after a machine recount.

Still in dispute are more than 700 uncounted votes from King County (Seattle area), which is predominantly Democratic. Yesterday's Seattle Times has this story on the fight over those ballots. The disputed ballots were erroneously rejected during the initial count because election officials wrongly believed that there was no matching signature that could be used to verify them.

A trial court judge granted the Republicans' request for a temporary restraining order blocking the counting of these ballots. The issue is now before the state supreme court. The case is being argued before that court today at 9:30 am and the decision is to be posted here on the court's website when it's issued.

Update (2:30 pm PT): The AP reports here that the Washington Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Democrats, ordering that the 723 late-discovered ballots must be counted. Also, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has this timeline on the Washington gubenatorial race, which states that King County is to report its results (not including the disputed ballots) this afternoon.
- posted by Dan Tokaji @ 2:12 PM