THE RECOUNT
Sounds a little like 2004 Washington
I see that a Minneapolis election official "found" some uncounted ballots last Friday, three days after the election. Not surprisingly, the newly discovered ballots favored Democrat Al Franken, strengthening his challenge to Republican Norm Coleman's lead in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race. I hate to say it, but I think Minnesota Republicans are about to get, uh, "taken advantage of," to put it euphemistically. Believe me, I know the feeling.
Out here in Washington state, we had the exact same situation in our 2004 governor's race -- we elected Republican Dino Rossi by a margin of some 700 votes. Democrat Christine Gregoire claimed that, rather than a defeat for her, such a narrow margin was actually "a tie," and she insisted on a recount.
In the first two recounts, the margin got narrower but remained in Rossi's favor. Gregoire continued to insist it was a tie and pushed for a hand recount, which, for some reason that was never very clear to us, was supposed to be more accurate than a machine recount.
Then an interesting thing happened: In the third recount, lo and behold, the elections commissioner of (heavily Democratic) King County "discovered" some mysteriously uncounted ballots behind a filing cabinet. Gosh! These ballots had somehow been overlooked in the first three counts! You will never guess who those ballots favored -- Christine Gregoire!
This put her up by 133 votes, at which point she inexplicably stopped talking about a tie and started talking about "the need to move on."
So listen for the magic words from Al Franken: "It's time for us to move on." As soon as you hear that, you'll know that the most recent recount finally went his way and that you've been, shall we say, taken advantage of, just like your friends out here in Washington.
PAUL NAUMANN, TACOMA, WASH.
•••