From here:

The night before Washington's secretary of state was scheduled to certify Democrat Christine Gregoire as the governor-elect, her Republican rival Dino Rossi called for a complete re-do of the longest, closest governor's race in state history.

"The uncertainty surrounding this election process isn't just bad for you and me - it is bad for the entire state. People need to know for sure that the next governor actually won the election," Rossi said Wednesday evening, reading from a letter he sent to Gregoire.

"A revote would be the best solution for the people of our state, and would give us a legitimate governorship," the letter added.

Gregoire, the three-term state attorney general who fought America's tobacco industry, Internet porn and schoolyard bullying, won a hand recount by a scant 129 votes out of more than 2.8 million cast.

Gregoire's spokesman Morton Brilliant said she would not be joining Rossi's call. "It's irresponsible to spend $4 million in taxpayer money on a new election just because you don't' like losing this one," Brilliant said.

More than eight weeks after Election Day, the Republican secretary of state, Sam Reed, on Thursday planned to certify the results of the unprecedented third vote tally. The statewide hand recount put Gregoire ahead for the first time, by just a tiny fraction of 1 percent.

Rossi, the former state Senate budget committee chairman, won the regular tally last month by 261 votes, triggering an automatic machine recount. He won that count, too, by 42 votes.

Democrats, aided by presidential candidates John Kerry and Howard Dean, rounded up $1 million in donations, mostly online, to order the hand recount.

That count, done precinct by precinct by bipartisan teams with swarms of observers watching, showed Gregoire ahead by just 10 votes. After Democrats and election officials got permission from the state Supreme Court, a batch of more than 700 wayward ballots in King County was tallied, stretching her lead to three digits.

While noting that he could contest the election, Rossi said a legal challenge could drag on for weeks or months. The better way to clear up the mess, he said, would be to ask lawmakers to pass a bill calling for a special election as soon as the Democrat-controlled state Legislature convenes in early January for the 2005 session.

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