King County canvassing board hard at work

There have been different dates going around for when the Secretary of State will certify the gubernatorial race. The Secretary of State has confirmed to NPI and Permanent Defense that it will be after Christmas - tentatively scheduled for the 30th. Every county except for King has certified its results, however.

At 10 AM this morning, the King County Canvassing Board met to begin considering some 735 ballots which were not counted earlier due to county election officials' error. The GOP had filed a lawsuit trying to prevent the county from counting those ballots. But the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the county can count them.

The county is supposed to report at 5 PM today with updated results.

In this morning's news, the Seattle P-I has a good story about developments in the race: "Third time may be charm for Gregoire" and the Seattle Times also has a thoughtful story: "Focus turns to canvassing board".

Most interesting of all, however, is Secretary of State Sam Reed's guest column in the Seattle Times: "Standards in place for a fair recount." In his column, Reed explains that your ballot only counts if:

• You are a registered voter of the state of Washington;
• Your signature matches the signature on your voter registration card;
• Your ballot arrived on time;
• And you clearly voted for one candidate in the governor’s race.
  

Reed is right. We should have confidence in our elections system. It is working as it should, and the Supreme Court has affirmed the Secretary of State's interpretation of the law twice.

Some GOP partisans have accused the King County canvassing board of making partisan decisions. The board is made up of two Democrats and one Republican. However, HorsesAss.org dispels these accusations:

So to set the record straight, I decided to ask the other member, Republican Dan Satterberg, who was appointed to the canvassing board to represent King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng. Here is what he wrote back:

The King County Canvassing Board reviewed around 1,600 ballots during the manual recount that were forwarded to us by the recount boards for determination of voter intent. The vast majority of those questioned ballots were resolved by a unanimous consensus of the Board. There were probably only about 20 contested votes, though I did not keep track of the number. While the split was always 2-1, of course, I was not always on the losing side.

Republicans continue to protest, but to no avail. They are more interested in winning than having a fair election, but we already knew that.

We'll bring you the latest news from the Board at five.