Washington State will become a fiasco.

[rbt48]

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.

[rbt48]

Yes, I did misunderstand you.  Wow, Alcon, those are amazingly precise projections.  My hat's off to you.  I'm a meteorologist and what you have done is akin to me predicting temperatures to the nearest one-thousandith of a degree.

Anyway, it will be fascinating to see how this race turns out.

[rbt48]

Latest vote totals from the Washington Secretary of State
(http://www.vote.wa.gov/general/statewide.aspx) as of 7:25 PM PST, Nov 16:

Christine Gregoire Democrat 1,367,346 48.87%
 
Dino Rossi  Republican 1,367,365 48.87%
 
Ruth Bennett Libertarian 63,062 2.25%

For those arithmetically challenged, that is a whopping margin of 19 votes for Rossi.  What will tomorrow bring?

[rbt48]

Christine Gregoire  Democrat 1,370,967 48.87%

Dino Rossi Republican 1,370,954 48.87%

Ruth Bennett Libertarian 63,327 2.25%

5:59 PM PST report has Gregoire up by 13 votes.

[rbt48]

Christine Gregoire Democrat 1,371,153 48.86%

Dino Rossi Republican 1,371,414 48.87%

Ruth Bennett Libertarian 63,346 2.25%

Apparently all counties reported, Rossi lead of 261 votes.

Reported by WA Secretary of State, 6:33 PM PST

No manual recount as the margin is > 150 votes.

Also, from the WA Secretary of State website,
"Most counties can recount all ballots in one day. Some counties may take two days. King County will need approximately four days to recount all ballots.

If the recount were ordered on Wednesday, November 17, 2004 , King County would most likely begin recounting on Saturday, November 20, 2004 and all other counties would begin on Monday, November 22, 2004 .

Under this timeframe, all counties should be completed with the recount by Wednesday, November 24, 2004 , the day before Thanksgiving.

The Secretary of State is required to certify the election returns 30 days after the general election. This year that date falls on December 2, 2004."