Jul 31 2008
Absent four years ago, will they cast a ballot this time?
Pollsters say the Washington state race for governor will be among the closest political contests in the nation in November. The latest Vision Dynamics poll reveals that 47% of respondents say they will vote for incumbent Christine Gergoire, while 45% say they’ll vote for Dino Rossi. The poll shows that 8% were undecided. Several other recent polls have the two candidates in a tie at 45% each.
After counting the vote in 2004, and recounting, Republican Dino Rossi appeared to have won the very close election. You will recall that somehow some new ballots were discovered in King County after the second count, and Gregoire was favored in most of them. She won by a mere 133 votes, but the whole episode left a very bad taste in the mouths of many voters who believe to this day, that due to shenanigans in King County, Gregoire was able to steal the election.
Political billboards posted across the state warn against letting King County steal the election in 2008. Gregoire is offended by them of course, but the group that paid for the signs isn’t kidding.
The truth is, King County didn’t “steal” the election so much as it was forfeited by voters in many counties, (most in eastern Washington), where substantial opposition to Gregoire was found in 2004. Had a mere few dozen more voters opposed to Gregoire for governor in each county, cast a ballot in 2004, Rossi would have won comfortably.
The good news is they still can make the difference this election year. The Governor knows that, and Christine Gregoire also knows that following a number of reforms put in place in the last few years, this will be a much cleaner election.
It should actually be pretty easy to knock off the incumbent this fall. She has endeared herself to almost no one who opposed her in 2004.
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Except you leave out the fact that there were more ballots counted in King County than there were registered voters. That is “theft”, “fraud”, and a lot of other unsavory terms. Rossi should ask the UN for poll observers in the county.