PORT TOWNSEND — An “anomaly” in Jefferson County’s Thursday hand recount of ballots in the razor-thin state governor’s race made County Auditor Donna Eldridge a believer in automated ballot counting.
“Hand counting is not as accurate as a machine count,” Eldridge declared Thursday afternoon following the state-ordered hand recount, the third governor’s race tally since the Nov. 2 election.
The last count left Republican Dino Rossi governor-elect, just 42 votes ahead of Democrat Christine Gregoire.
Rossi gained five Jefferson County votes and Gregoire eight more during the hand recount Thursday morning in the conference room next of the county auditor’s office.
Rossi was still the distant loser in Jefferson County after the recount Thursday with 7,294 votes. Gregoire garnered 10,641.
Eldridge made her comment after recounting a recounted Port Townsend precinct at the request of Al Frank, county Republican Party election observer supervisor, who discovered the anomaly during the hand recount Thursday morning, which he then reported to Eldridge.
Absentees recounted
Eldridge ordered that the absentee ballots in Port Townsend voting precinct 9703, which takes in Mountain View Elementary, Kah Tai Care Center and vicinity, be recounted.
The recount of that precinct’s recount uncovered a Rossi vote that had accidentally gone to Gregoire, perhaps because two ballots were stuck together and placed in the wrong stack for counting, Frank believes.
After discovering the anomaly and correcting the tally, Eldridge admitted, “Al was right.”
