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Counting Glitches In Washington Governor Race

Posted by timothy on from the some-votes-more-equal-than-others dept.

Fjornir writes "With 19 votes currently seperating the challenger from the incumbent in Washington state's race for governor, local news sites sites are reporting more glitches in the process for counting votes. This one, which has been described alternately as 'computer problems' and 'human error' as I've watched the story unfold, caused 6,200 ballots to be counted twice. This raises the question -- how many 'isolated incidents' are there going to be before we admit we have a 'real problem' on our hands?" Votes must be certified today, and a difference of less than 2,000 means an automatic statewide recount. If the difference is less than 150, that recount will be by hand (which is hard for the voting machines that have no paper trail). Update: 11/18 05:46 GMT by P : One candidate finished with a lead of 261, so the statewide recount will not be by hand, and should be completed before Thanksgiving.

3 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Small correction by Pacifix · · Score: 3, Informative

    The post says there's an incumbent in the race, but there isn't. The current governor, Gary Locke (D), chose not to run again, so both Gregoire (D) and Rossi (R) are challengers.

  2. There is no incumbent by ironygranny · · Score: 3, Informative

    The race is between Chris Gregoire (D) and Dino Rossi (R), both vying to replace the outgoing Gary Locke.

  3. A paper trail isn't all its cracked up to be by EduardoTheBastard · · Score: 4, Informative
    Why does the poster assume there is no paper trail? From reading too many stories on Slashdot?

    I am a Washington State voter, and my whole county (Snohomish) uses the same type of voting machine. Other counties are different. But here you can watch the little ticker-tape coming out of the back of each machine. I don't know how the votes are encoded, but there is definitely a paper audit trail.

    I'm actually concerned about the accuracy of the recount, since it is likely to be hand-counted (required by law when the difference is below some threshold -- I don't know the specifics.) Despite any bugs in the electronic systems that may or may not affect the count, hand-counting pretty much guarantees a certain margin of error.

    Anyone ever tried to accurately count a stack of ten thousand pieces of paper, dividing them into two separate piles in the process? I screw up occassionally just separating puzzle pieces into separate groups of edge and center pieces -- for small (100 piece) jigsaw puzzles!