Is It Over?

After counting nearly 3 million ballots three different times, four lawsuits, seven weeks and a series of embarrassing mistakes in King County, Democrat Christine Gregoire finally came out ahead in Washington's gubernatorial election.

In the hand recount which ended yesterday after King County tallied 566 disputed ballots, Gregoire came out ahead by 130 votes.

According to the Seattle Times, Gregoire did not call on Rossi to concede, but said she would have conceded if she were the one who had lost the manual recount. However that statement is inconsistent with Gregoire's previous statements commenting on the two counts that Rossi won:

When she was 261 votes behind Rossi after the first count, Gregoire called the race a virtual tie. At 42 votes back after the first recount, she said it was, in fact, a tie. Now, she said, "It's time for this race and this election to be over."

This election isn't over yet. More litigation is possible or as the Seattle Times reports, there may be "a full-scale legal attack by Republicans that could lead to a new election."

The Democrats never seem to tire of playing the ends justify the means game. The will bend or change the rules until they win, or until the courts force them to stop.

UPDATE: At Captain's Quarters, Captain Ed said it best, posting:

The Democrats have managed to recount their way to victory, using the standard-bending and vote-mining methods they tried in Florida until the grown-ups made them stop.

Well said!

At Poliblog, Steven Taylor gets it exactly right posting, "if it was valid for the disputed ballots in King county to be reviewed to assure that no vote had been wrongly discarded, then a statewide canvassing to guarantee the same treatment to all ballots which might have been wrongly rejected ought to take place as well."

As Taylor also posts, the Washington Democratic Party has demonstrated that the fundamental issue for them isn’t “letting every vote count.” Like in Florida 2000, the Democrat's issue is letting every vote count that will be tallied for the Democratic Party's candidate.

At Outside The Beltway, James Joyner makes a good point posting:

It's amazing that, when they lost after the first and second count, the Democrats were anything but magnanimous. Now that the election has been stolen for them by corrupt election officials and partisan judges, they want the Republicans to be gracious about it.

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Comments

[EdWonk]

It's another case of count-until-you-get-it-right. No wonder Washington has the reputation liberal lunacy that it does. Remember the Senatorial election a couple of years ago? Maria Whatshername was a democrat that won another "disputed" election. California is bad enough, but Wash. State is the worst.