Schedule The Run-Off... NOW!

The Wall Street Journal's John Fund must-read All the Votes Fit to Count in today's online Opinion Journal. The subtitle says it all: "Ukraine gets to revote. Why can't Washington state?"

Over this weekend I spoke with many people of both political parties, and the mutual consensus was clear: claiming victory with scant votes is pyrrhic at best - and more likely a prescription for voter backlash in two years. Out among the grassroots, partisans from both camps sense that the only way to wipe the slate clean is to do just that: hold a revote. Now no less national a figure as the Wall Street Journal's John Fund weighs in on the revote side as well.

If President Bush's margin of victory in Ohio had been 1,190 votes instead of 119,000 votes, it's a safe bet that state's 20 decisive electoral votes would still be locked in a bitter legal battle. In fact, the battle would likely resemble the one going on right now over who won Washington state's bizarrely close race for governor. The state is now concluding its third count of the 2.9 million ballots, and Republican Dino Rossi clings to a 50 vote lead over Democrat Christine Gregoire. King County, which includes liberal Seattle, is the only county left to report.

Amid all the wrangling over this election, almost all semblance of a fair system has been lost. It now looks like Washington's election will be decided by lawyers and a court, rather than by the voters. The result probably hinges on whether 723 King County absentee ballots that were rejected during the first two vote counts will be counted after all. A local judge has ruled that it is too late to inject the 723 ballots into the recount and that if they were valid votes they should have been counted in the first or second recounts. Democrats respond that the fault lies with King County clerks, who failed to take extra steps to verify the ballots, and not with the voters.

This gets to the major point: the King County 'Democrat Machine' power structure has the most to lose here.

Washington state's election nightmare began when Dino Rossi apparently won the election by about 3,000 votes. Then two days before the original vote count was certified, King County announced it had 10,000 more absentee ballots than it had previously estimated. Mr. Rossi's lead fell to less than 1,000 votes.

A local judge allowed Democratic Party officials to obtain the names and addresses of 723 people who had cast provisional ballots but were in danger of not being counted because of mismatching or missing signatures. Democratic officials then contacted voters and asked them who they had voted for in the race for governor. If the answer was Ms. Gregoire, the voter was allowed to correct his or her signature and thus have their ballot counted. Republicans belatedly began contacting their voters. The result was a net gain of some 400 votes for Ms. Gregoire. Mr. Rossi's lead fell to 261 votes.

At that point, the state began a mandatory machine recount of all ballots. But in King County the recount went beyond running the ballots through the counting machines. Officials there "enhanced" some 300 votes that had been rejected by the machines, in some cases altering them with white-out or filling in the ovals on the optical scan ballots. Again, these additional ballots benefited Ms. Gregoire. In 38 of the state's 39 counties, only 208 net votes were added to either Mr. Rossi or Ms. Gregoire in the recount. Then came King County, which represents 30% of the state's votes. Ms. Gregoire, who won 58% of the overall King County vote, harvested a net gain of 245 votes--more than the changes in the rest of the state for both candidates combined. At that point, with Mr. Rossi holding only a 42-vote lead, Democrats put up the money to pay for a third recount that would be conducted by hand, a process that most election observers, including those in charge of King County, view as less accurate than a machine count.

It didn't take long for new ballots to be discovered. On Dec. 7, more than a month after the election, King County said it had found 573 absentee ballots which had been rejected because they lacked or had improper signatures. A couple of days later, another 22 ballots were found hidden in voting machines that had been put into storage. None of these ballots had been stored in sealed and secured boxes. Election officials are usually leery of counting votes that haven't been kept under constant lock and key.

And then it got ugly. Exercise of raw political power is usually ugly. And here in King County, we are providing the political scientists with textbook case discussions the likes of which haven't been seen since the heyday of machine politics by Mayor Daily in Chicago, circa 1960.

Nonetheless, the Democratic controlled King County canvassing board rejected the Republican county prosecutor's advice not to count the 573 ballots. Then someone noticed that the list of disputed ballots did not include any voters whose names began with A or B. Another treasure hunt turned up 150 more votes that had been mistakenly put into storage. On Friday, Stephanie Arend, a local judge in neighboring Pierce County, stepped in and blocked the counting of all 723 new ballots. She said state law clearly stipulated that a recount was only supposed to count ballots already ruled valid, not add any more ballots to the mix.

On top of all this, the actual hand tabulation of the rest of the ballots in King County also saw a change in procedures midway through the count last week. Officials announced that they were overturning the policy of not counting ballots that had ovals filled in for both candidates ("over votes") and now would send these ballots to the canvassing board for final review. Officials said this represented no change in the rules, but the fact is that ballots are now being treated differently depending at what point in the recount they were examined.

So once again it goes back to the state Supreme Court. Like the movie 'Ground Hog Day' we face the specter of endless, looping media event. There are realistic scenarios under which this whole mess could be back before the Supreme Court several more times over the weeks ahead, right up through the actual Ground Hog Day.

The state Supreme Court will have to sift through this tangled web and reach a final decision quickly. The inauguration of a new governor is scheduled for Jan. 12. The dilemma the court faces is clear. The 723 disputed new voters were rejected by King County officials using a level of verification and scrutiny that they had agreed on in advance. Now county officials want to add votes into the final recount that were not included in the first two counts because they have belatedly found that the ballots would have been declared valid if the clerks had gone further and taken additional verification steps.

But do the two political parties want any part of this in light of the fallout which would well hurt them badly in future elections?

Legally, there is a strong argument for not adding new ballots into the already compromised recount process. But perception also matters. Should Mr. Rossi win because some ballots aren't counted, he'll take office under a cloud of "fraud" as Democrats claim that more people wanted Ms. Gregoire to win. Their argument will carry some weight.

Former Secretary of State Ralph Munro, a moderate Republican, says confidence in the election system has been so damaged that the only way to restore it may be to consider holding a new election in February. King County has now added ballots into its count so many times that almost no one other than the lawyers involved can easily explain the chain of events.

There is no provision in Washington state law for holding a new election. It would have to be ordered by the state Supreme Court or by a special session of the legislature. But now is the time to raise the issue because no one knows for sure which candidate will come out ahead this week in the final count. Sam Reed, the state's secretary of state, says a rerun of the election is eminently doable and notes that a small town in Washington did rerun an election after it was discovered that some people who were ineligible had been allowed to cast ballots.

We shall soon see if pride goeth before a fall, most certainly it will should experience be our guide: the state party leaders - for both the Republicans and Democrats - have been in a protracted state of war for so long now it is but fait accompli. They see each other through the cross-hairs of political rifle scopes - and view tactics on a skirmish-by-skirmish basis - effective for election campaigns maybe, but disastrous for doing the people's business. Uber-Commentator John Fund, from his vantage point outside of the Northwest, is a bit less jaundiced, and (hopefully) more sage on this score:

If leaders of both parties could agree that the November election has been hopelessly compromised, public pressure for a clarifying rematch would build. It would be highly irregular, but so too is the fact that whoever wins the third count of votes would govern under a cloud in which their legitimacy would be questioned. Let's hope the public will also demand a thorough housecleaning of Washington state's election laws, which imprudently allow 65% of its voters to cast troublesome absentee ballots.

Washington state's predicament is also a warning flare for the rest of the country about how sloppy our election procedures still are. In most states we are just as unable to handle a photo-finish election as we were when the Bush v. Gore legal fight occurred in 2000; It's time to redouble our efforts to make our elections something the rest of the world can't snicker at.

I spoke with a leading regional political (television) reporter yesterday. He quickly acknowledged that the reputation of our region is on the line. Certainly elected King County officials have the most at stake. But our entire region is now viewed as a laughing-stock: ongoing banana republic backroom machinations have splashed us all with a broad brush - extending beyond politics to our corporations (can you say Microsoft, Starbucks), non-profits (billion dollar charities like the Gates Foundation and World Vision), cultural institutions, sports teams and yes - also you and me. The news media in this country (and around the world) will soon have a lot of fun about the corrupt yokels out Seattle-way. Over the last decade, our region has become best-known for losing Boeing and screwing-up the W.T.O. conference. With vote-counting processes somewhere south of Ukrainian standards it must be asked: Ready for a third major embarassment?