POLITICS: Florida 2000, Washington 2004

The election for governor is incredibly close in Washington state, and it's looking like the Democrats are going to try much the same tactics as were used in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.

Dino Rossi, the Republican, won the initial count by 261 votes out of some 2.6 million cast. That triggered an automatic recount, which also resulted in a Rossi win, although by 42 votes. Now, the Democratic candidate, Christine Gregoire, has the option of requesting yet another recount, although at this time at her expense, in the hopes of finding more votes somehow. The bad part is that it appears she'll only ask for a recount in King County, which voted some 60% in her favor and is therefore more likely to end up with a few extra votes for her. She'll undoubtedly not ask for statewide recount and will prefer to exclude those counties that had increases in Rossi's vote during the recount.

This is exactly what was going on in Florida in 2000. Gore was asking not for statewide recounts (after the first) but rather, for recounts in only the three southern counties where he had already won. Part of what the Supreme Court told Florida at the time was that recounting only some of the ballots, not the entire state's ballots, violated the Constitution's Equal Protection clause. They were also told that the law that specified certification must be completed in seven days could not be interpreted as meaning it's okay to hold off certification for nineteen days.

Let's hope this doesn't drag on and on. There may be 1.3 million voters that will be happy if Gregoire somehow finds 43 or more votes that make her governor, but there will be 1.3 million voters that will be very unhappy that after two counts of the ballots that have their candidate winning, recounts can just keep happening until Gregoire's happy with the results. This is where the instant runoff voting system I mentioned a couple weeks ago would be very helpful, since Rossi's numbers are undoubtedly much lower with 2% of the vote going to a Libertarian candidate, whose supporters would likely have put Rossi as their second choice by a wide margin.

Is there any question any more that an individual's vote matters, when elections are decided by such small margins?