Florida.

Well, the good news is that Washington State taxpayers won’t get stuck paying for the third counting of the ballots for Governor. Apparently, the state Democratic Party came up with $730K, enough to pay for statewide the hand recount (thanks, in part, to $250K of unused money from the John Kerry campaign).

The bad news is that this circus will be going on for another three weeks, at least. I can just imagine the fighting over procedures, questionable ballots, etc. that we have to look forward to.

I do appreciate that they decided to pay for the entire statewide recount, rather than choosing a county or two most likely to change the outcome and then sticking the state with the expense for recounting the rest of the counties (as would be required if the outcome changed).

But, rather than claim that the reason for the recount is to be sure that all the votes are counted, why not be honest and just admit that they are demanding a recount because they have a right to, and they’re willing to pay to roll the dice again and hope that the margin of error goes in their favor this time? I doubt they would be as skeptical that the votes had been counted correctly if they had won.

Also, can anybody tell me why I should expect a hand count to be more accurate than a machine count? That seems pretty unlikely to me.