Unfinished Election Business

Washington Governor's Seat Up For Grabs; Ohio Recount Likely Moot

(CBS/AP)  The 2004 election isn't settled yet.

Washington state voters won't know the results of a hand recount of their gubernatorial election until the week of Christmas. The Republican's margin of victory now stands at 42 votes.

Ohio, drowned with political ads and endless campaign visits, faces recounts in the presidential race in all 88 counties, although the results are not expected to change.

In Florida, the election chief of a county that neglected to count 1,400 ballots during the 2000 election is disciplining her staff for more errors that happened this year.

Washington's secretary of state ordered the unprecedented statewide hand recount Monday.

The race between Republican Dino Rossi and Democrat Christine Gregoire ended in a virtual dead heat in the first two counts. Rossi led by more than 200 votes after the initial count, triggering a machine recount.

Rossi then emerged with a 42-vote lead out of 2.9 million ballots cast following the recount.

The Democrats then ordered the manual recount and went to the state Supreme Court to demand that some previously disqualified ballots be counted. The Supreme Court is expected to take up the case Thursday.

Ohio has certified a 2 percentage-point election victory for President Bush, but scrutiny of the vote is expected to continue for several more days.

Independent candidates were prepared to demand recounts in all 88 counties Tuesday, action that election boards say they're ready for but don't believe is necessary.

"Our experience with recounts based on our system in Allen County show either no change in our count, or one or two votes possibly," said Keith Cunningham, the county's election board director and incoming president of the Ohio Association of Election Board Directors.

The presidential election hung on Ohio, a battleground state prized for its 20 electoral votes. Not until the morning after the election did Kerry, presented with the state's results, finally concede.

Recount advocates have cited numerous Election Day problems, from long lines, a shortage of voting machines in predominantly minority neighborhoods and suspicious vote totals for candidates in scattered precincts.

Republicans said the recount won't change anything.

"If there's a recount, there's going to be two losers — John Kerry and the Ohio taxpayer," said Mark Weaver, a lawyer representing the Ohio Republican Party. "It's going to cost more than $1.5 million to find out what we already know."

In Florida, Pinellas County's elections chief is punishing staff members, changing internal controls and planning to offer more employee training after her office made mistakes surrounding the Nov. 2 election.

Two of the recent errors were made by a staff member who mistakenly reported "no" votes as "yes" votes for a statewide constitutional amendment legalizing slot machines in South Florida, and a Pinellas charter amendment giving the county administrator authority to hire and fire employees without board confirmation.

Though both amendments failed in Pinellas, the staff member recorded them as passing.

In the statewide slot machine initiative, Clark's staff knew two days after the election of the discrepancy, but failed to fully investigate for two weeks. By then, it was too late to make changes.

Neither mistake affected the ultimate outcome.

In the closely contested 2000 presidential election, the office neglected to count 1,400 ballots and counted more than 900 ballots twice. In 2001, her office misplaced six absentee ballots in a Tarpon Springs election. In 2002, she gave voters the wrong ballots in an election covering the Lealman area north of St. Petersburg. A month ago, her office lost track of 280 ballots that were not counted until it was too late.