Four years ago, the world watched as election officials scrutinized hanging chads in Florida. Now residents in Washington State, where the outcome of the super-close gubernatorial election is still in doubt, are getting their own taste of election drama. The Post-Intelligencer reports:

A Superior Court judge ordered King County election officials to give Democrats the names of 929 voters whose provisional ballots face rejection over signature inconsistencies. The state Democratic Party sued for that list so it can try to track down those voters and encourage them to appeal the rejection, as Republicans are doing in a number of Rossi-leaning counties.

“We’re thrilled with what happened,” said Kristin Brost, spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party. “It looks like it’s going to be very, very close and (Gregoire) can now know that her supporters are going to have every opportunity to have their votes counted.”

Republicans were not a party to the suit. But Chris Vance, chairman of the state Republican Party, warned that Democrats had “opened the door to litigation chaos.”

It’s worth recalling former Senator Slade Gorton’s gracious concession four years ago to Democrat Maria Cantwell. That year, the race was equally close, but was resolved without resort to courts.

Stefan Sharkansky of Sound Politics is keeping a running tally of the gubernatorial vote count. He forecasts that republican Dino Rossi will win by 4,000+ votes. He notes that only one newspaper in the MSM, the Tacoma News Tribune, has performed a similar analysis.

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