A flash from Washington super-close governor's race (GOOD NEWS FOR REPUBLICAN DINO ROSSI)

Taken from: http://www.soundpolitics.com/ (This is the message of a republican blogger:)

King County Vote Count Flash My friend the Republican vote count observer reports some very good news for Dino Rossi:

We wrapped up in the MBOS [Mail Ballot Operations Satellite] facility at about 2:00 today, with the following survey numbers:

Based upon the percentages, Rossi ended on a high note. A possible explanation for today’s sudden improvement is that many of the final provisional ballots to be duplicated in King County were ballots that had been cast in other counties (but in which the voter was registered in King County).

We had a much larger sample size today than yesterday, relative to the actual number of duplicated ballots. Since fewer ballots were duplicated today, I suspect that the percentage of King County votes for Rossi in the batch to be tabulated and reported on Monday (which includes all ballots handled since 4:00 on Friday) will rise slightly from the survey projection sent to you yesterday. I cannot envision a scenario in which Monday’s results from King County will be worse than last Friday’s.

Until today, we were worried that a disproportionate number of Seattle ballots might have remained in the final 11,000 to be counted by King County, but this just did not occur.

From: http://www.timothygoddard.com/blog/

November 14th, 2004
Bright future for Washington GOP?
A generally good Seattle Weekly article on the strength of Rossi’s campaign notes some figures that should be of great comfort to Republicans in Washington State.: young Washingtonians vote Repubican. According to CNN exit polls, 18-29 year-olds in Washington State voted for Bush by one point, Nethercutt by three points and Dino Rossi by an astounding 14 points. A communications professor at the University of Washington dismisses any indications that this might represent actual opinion, instead attributing this to the success of various get-out-the-vote methods:

John Gastil says that’s a testament to the strength of conservative Christian organizing. Young people, says Gastil, are hard for campaigns to reach because they do not belong in great numbers to political parties, unions, or other established groups. He claims there are two places to go to organize a turnout of young people: colleges and churches. Democrats favor the former, Republicans favor the latter. “Church-based mobilization must have been more effective than university-based mobilization,” says Gastil.
This seems a pretty weak explanation to me, especially considering the enormity of the Democratic-friendly get-out-the-vote effort on college campuses, and the relative non-existence of an organized campaign amidst churches. While it’s true that churches–mine, at least–encouraged people to vote more than I’ve noticed in the past, it was hardly MoveOn.org on Sunday morning.

It seems to me that there are a few other explanations for this. The Roe Effect, for example, would explain quite a bit here, especially considering the fact that Washington has one of the highest abortion rates in the nation. The CNN poll (foolishly) contained no information on marital status or child-rearing status, so it’s harder to make any sort of estimates based on that–but it’s clear that, in general, people who have children more pro-Bush than others. Another possibility is that young people are simply reacting negatively to the politics of their parents–the 45-59 group that voted highest for Democrats. A third, very real possibility is that the military–who are both more likely to vote than your typical young person, and far more likely to vote for Bush–has “imported” a great deal of 18-29 year olds to Washington’s many military bases, skewing the vote to the right. The enormity of the vote for Rossi could also be linked to the fact that most people 18-29 have never really known life under a Republican governor, and are ready to give it a try.

All of these are both possibilities and all of them no doubt contributed to the trend. It’s clear, though, that this remarkable support for Republicans cannot be chalked up merely to to superior GOTV methods. There is a significant difference between the young people of Washington State and the rest. If the Republicans can harness and cultivate that difference, the future for the GOP here could be much brighter than most people realize.

I remember one one governor's election count that went on for months:

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/opinion/10066533.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

Mon, Nov. 01, 2004
Richard McFarland Commentary
"Now this was a close election"

The value of a good election recount system has been proven many times, no more so than in the 1962 Minnesota gubernatiorial election - so close that "election night" lasted 4 months.

It may have been the longest, most hair-raising gubernatiorial election in the history of the country. The lead went back and forth the night of the election Nov. 6, and through several recounts and canvasses and a recount trial ...

Lt. Gov. Karl F. Rolvaag of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party led in the original canvass by 58 votes over Republican Gov. Elmer L. Andersen. But the Minnesota Supreme Court approved some county corrections, giving Andersen the lead by 142 votes and certified him as the winner. Then, at Rolvaag's request a three-judge panel appointed by the state Supreme Court directed a recount trial and Rolvaag won that election by 91 votes. …

The race between United Press International and The Associated Press in collecting, adding and reporting the votes was almost as exciting as covering the election. As Minneapolis bureau manager, I set up and ran the coverage for UPI while AP bureau chief George Moses headed the AP operation. Each of us had county reporters phoning returns to us. At times one of us would have one candidate ahead by a few votes while the other had the other candidate in front by a few votes. It went on like that all night and all week. …

For about three months, the judges and attorneys and others from both parties pored over the ballots in the statewide recount. Meantime, the state legislature was holding its session in the state capitol.

On March 25, Rolvaag led by 91 votes in the recount trial, there were only a handful of ballots still to check, and Andersen had agreed not to appeal the result. At noon Rolvaag took the oath of office as Minnesota's 31st governor. …

A book, "Recount" by Ronald F. Stinnett and University of Minnesota professor Charles H. Backstrom, observed that the judges in the recount tried to count every ballot that was "even remotely savable" and it was a "remarkable demonstration" of respect given to the voters.

"One must also emphasize again, in Minnesota at least, that it is now virtually impossible for a voter to lose his vote, unless he clearly marks two names for one office, or admits he truly intended to destroy the secrecy of the ballot," their book said. "Careless marking, extraneous marks, numbers or even sometimes initials, will not now normally invalidate a ballot."

The book quoted the Washington Post as saying at the time, "The complete canvass of the returns disclosed no evidence of fraud, corruption, ballot stuffing or other deliberate irregularity. Minnesotans can say, with more evidence than the citizens of any other jurisdiction, that their election was honest."

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