In an amazing turn of events, Washington gubernatorial candidate Christine Gregoire lashed out at her fellow party members in North Carolina, calling a revote wasteful and counterproductive:
“This ain’t golf. No mulligans allowed here, folks,” said Gregoire’s spokesman, Morton Brilliant. “It’s irresponsible to spend $4 million in taxpayer money on a new election just because you don’t like losing this one.”
Of course, I’m writing with tongue firmly in cheek. Gregoire made these comments in response to GOP candidate Dino Rossi’s request for a revote after a series of irregularities in ballot handling, especially in King County, switched an original 230-vote GOP victory to a 130-vote loss.
In North Carolina, the margin of GOP victory in the agricultural commissioner race was about half of the disputed ballots lost in a predominantly Republican county. In Washington, the disputed votes come up to at least five times the new margin of victory. Yet in North Carolina, Democrats break the rules to order new statewide elections while in Washington a revote is considered a waste of taxpayer money.
It’s not likely that Rossi will get his revote; it requires approval from the Democratic-controlled legislature. Perhaps the two incidents will finally put paid to the meme that Democrats are defenders of the “count every vote” concept, however.