Washington State will become a fiasco.

[bgwah]

The recount in the 2002 senate race increased Cantwell's lead, perhaps it will help out Gregoire too.

[bgwah]

Update including today's numbers:

Rossi 1,368,964 (48.95%)
Gregoire 1,365,562 (48.83%)
Bennett 62,256 (2.23%)

On another note, I have heard from the news media both that the recount will go into effect if it is within 0.5% or if it is within 2,000 votes. I'm not sure which is accurate.

I've heard that too. My guess is that when the state constitution was written, the vote difference being less than 2,000 votes could very well have been a wider % gap than 0.5%, but they figured there would be population growth so put the 0.5% in there too.

[bgwah]

Interesting.  The Seattle Times (on-line) and Washington Secretary of State website have these totals:
Gregoire (D) 1,360,871
Rossi (R) 1,360,713

That is about 22,000 less votes counted.  What a crazy way to count votes.  Also, according to the Seattle Times, the two political parties are scrambling to get provisional voters to correct their signatures on ballots so they can be legally counted.  Here is an excerpt:

"We are calling the folks whose ballots were rejected and then we're going to their homes trying to help them to get their votes to count," Berendt said.

Ryan Bianchi, communications assistant for the Gregoire campaign, said the canvassers knock on doors and ask if the person is a Gregoire voter. "If they say no, we just tell them to have a nice day," he said. If they said yes, then they continued with the process.

lol, i like the last part.

[bgwah]

I hope more ballots are "found" in King County.

[bgwah]

You know what sucks, now we have to wait for a recount. There is really no doubt whether there will be one now. THe last recounts have usually been closer to 2000, but it looks like this wont, so a recount may actually change the result!