The Washington State Supreme Court has rejected a petition by the state's Democratic Party to include several thousand disqualified ballots in the ongoing hand recount in the state's election for governor.
The court was unanimous in its rejection of the petition, and all eight justices signed the opinion, which found that during a manual recount, votes "are to be 'retabulated' only if they have been previously counted or tallied."
The case came about last week when the state Democratic Party sued Secretary of State Sam Reed and others to have the previously discarded ballots reconsidered during the recount, which began a week ago pending the outcome of the suit. Canvassing boards during the machine recount disqualified several thousand ballots because signatures were missing or didn't match those on file with the state.
Dino Rossi, the Republican candidate, won the original vote tally by 261 votes and the subsequent machine recount by 46 votes. He was named governor-elect, but the margin of victory in the machine recount was close enough that state law required a manual recount of the ballots.
http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2004/12/13/daily16.html?f=et80
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