Washington Governor: No New Election

Unsurprisingly Republican Dino Rossi has continued to refuse to concede in the Washington gubernatorial election, and has publicly urged Democrat, and as of today, governor-elect, Christine Gregoire to support a new election that would cost the state many millions of dollars.

In his letter to Gregoire, Rossi writes:

"Although you will be certified, with all the problems that have plagued this process there won’t be many people in our state who believe with certainty that you actually won the election. The uncertainty surrounding this election process isn’t just bad for you and me – it is bad for the entire state. People need to know for sure that the next governor actually won the election."

The thing is, Rossi has the power to wield great influence on how people view the outcome of this election. If he were to gracefully concede, saying the election was tight, hard fought, but in the end, fairly won, he could mitigate much of the damage his own party has caused through their own negative rhetoric.

He continues:

"We’ve now had three counts – I was certified the victor after Counts 1 and 2, and you will be certified tomorrow as the victor of Count 3."

This is exactly the problem. Rossi continues to equate this to a best-of-three type election, where he won twice and Gregoire won once. That isn't how it works. Gregoire won the final tally, the only one that matters in determining the outcome. This is vintage Republican poli-speak, the type they successfully used all throughout the presidential campaign.

He adds:

"Throughout the entire process, King County Elections staff changed the rules about which ballots would count and, at the end, the Supreme Court also changed the rules. As it now stands, some people in King County had the rules changed so their votes could count, while other wrongfully disenfranchised people across the state – including many members of our military – have been denied the opportunity to have their votes counted."

Misleading again. The election boards followed the rules. At no time did the Republican Secretary of State, Sam Reed, take the election boards to task for not doing so. When Democrats tried to expand the vote counting, against the rules, they were shot down by the courts. When Republicans tried to block the King County elections board from counting valid votes, a count that Reed approved, the courts sided with the Secretary of State.

"Additionally, I don’t believe you’ll find many people in this state who think the hand recount was more accurate than the first two counts. Even some Democratic elections officials have said hand counts are less accurate. So we’re now in a situation where nobody really knows who won this election."

Not true - we know that Gregoire won the election. The process was followed to more accurately count the votes. I point you again to Danny Westneat's article of his observations. If people think wrongly, then it is important for people close to the process to educate them on why the manual recount was more accurate.

The fact is Rossi's offer is nothing but politicking. He throws out a seeming peace offering with the backdrop of a threat of him contesting the election and dragging the state through the courts for the next few months. His advisors believe that by doing so, enough people will be sympathetic to his case and paint Gregoire as a villain should she decline.

Normally I would favor a run-off election. I have always felt that should no candidate receive 50% of the vote or better, there should be a run-off election the following week between the top two vote getters. This is a system used successfully many places, including for national elections. If it can been done elsewhere, then surely this country can figure out how to do it. The end result will be a candidate with a majority vote, and significant clout for minor party candidates who do not have enough votes to qualify for the run-off, but enough supporters to have a great influence on the outcome.

In this election Libertarian, Ruth Bennett, received over 63000 votes. She could try to lobby that her primary platform concerns be given serious consideration by the candidate she chooses to ask her supporters to vote for. Her voters could tip the balance one way or the other, and it is only natural that a run-off candidate looking for those votes give strong consideration to the issues those voters care about.

If we had a run-off scenario for president, people wanting to vote for Ralph Nader in past elections could have done so more freely. In 2000 his voters could have tipped the balance after neither Bush or Gore received 50% of the vote. Likely the Nader voters would have voted for Gore if there was a run-off. Fewer people would have called for Nader to drop out of the 2004 election, and his supporters would have felt more comfortable voting for him, showing the nation the true size of his constituency.

Run-off are a good idea that favor a multi-party rather than two-party system.

However, a run-off election scenario must be in place before an election. You cannot change the process after the election. Rossi said this election was "a mess". If so, then we should find ways to fix the process before going through another election that could also be a mess. Hopefully considering run-off elections will be one of the solutions on the table, but having a run-off now could be like jumping into the flames all over again.