Final votes are in in Grant County
Recount needed in governor's race
EPHRATA — The final votes are in for Grant County, but they will be counted one more time.
The more than 26,000 votes cast in the Nov. 2 election by Grant County voters will be recounted after a recount was triggered in the state governor's race.
With the election so close between Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi, the county will recheck its figures in that race. In Grant County, Rossi leads Gregoire by nearly 10,000 votes.
The county Canvassing Board of Election will hold a public meeting at 8:30 a.m. Monday to recount the votes. The meeting will be held in the Auditor's office in the Grant County Courthouse, and is open to the public. The meeting will continue until all the votes are recounted and the vote is certified.
The final vote count was certified Wednesday, with a total of 26,220 people voting by optical scan ballot. According to Grant County Auditor Bill Varney, that amounts to just under 80 percent of registered voters who came to the polls or voted by absentee ballot.
The final vote count brought in 2,909 more votes that were reported on election night, but the extra votes did not shift any races in Grant County. The extra votes are attributed to absentee ballots that were postmarked by the day of the election and trickled in to the elections office in the days following the election.
The recount will be done by voting machines, which Varney said should take five to six hours. This isn't the first time Grant County has had to recount its ballots, a recount was needed in the race for U.S. Senate in 2002.
Varney spent a portion of Wednesday looking over provisional and other ballots that were not initially counted. Assisting him were Grant County Commissioner Deborah Moore and Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Steve Hallstrom.
Varney said the canvassers counted five of the seven ballots they looked at on Wednesday. He said he had to throw out two ballots, because the voters signed their names to the ballots and the law says ballots can't be counted if the identity of the voter is known.