Christine Gregoire is not my governor. Nor will Ms. Gregoire be my governor come January 12, when she is to be inaugurated to the office held since 1997 by Democrat Gary Locke. It is not that I am intolerant of another Democrat in the Governor's Mansion, for during my 19-year lifetime in the Evergreen State, I have known no other reality. The reason this Washingtonian cannot accept the governorship of Ms. Gregoire is that it is uncertain whether she has been elected.

Like Florida in 2000, the Washington governor election is ridiculously close, madly confusing, and increasingly unstable. Unlike Florida, where President Bush won each of the vote counts and would still have won under Al Gore's appeal for a full statewide recount (according to a six-month study by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago), Washington State's canvassing and re-canvassing has yielded two different winners. Furthermore, there is some real, apparent fraud that has taken place. 

For the first two tabulations of the November 2 governor election ballots, Republican Dino Rossi was the victor, with a 261-vote lead over Gregoire after the initial machine total that narrowed to a 42-vote gap for Rossi after a machine recount. A special hand recount in December put Gregoire ahead of Rossi by 129 votes.

If the hand recount had been transparently flawless, Dino Rossi should have conceded by now. But every day, a new problem with the canvassing process is revealed, and every day, the decision by Secretary of State (liberal Republican) Sam Reed to certify the results of the hand recount for Ms. Gregoire seems more and more unjust. Every day, the title of Governor Gregoire seems less and less credible.

In the state's largest county, King County, 3,539 more votes were cast than the number of voters who signed in to vote. In Clark County, there is a 1,005 vote-to-voter discrepancy. Anywhere from 388 to 1,700 votes are irreconcilable with voters in Snohomish County. And in Pierce County where I live, Republicans claim that there was an excess of 1,640 votes over voters. Thus far, the discrepancies appear to mount to nearly 8,500 scenarios. 

This, of course, reeks of fraud. "It does not matter who votes, only who counts the votes," said Joseph Stalin. This seems to be the case in a state where the difference between a Governor Gregoire and a Governor Rossi is so slim that a few quiet little alterations here and a couple of stuffed machines there make all of the difference.

How to resolve the fiasco? The state legislature is set to ratify the election of the governor on the first day of its session before a gubernatorial inauguration, but Republicans are poised to reject Gregoire next week. Key state leaders, including a growing list of legislators, a former governor, and former secretary of state, are calling for a re-vote. "The Governor's election produced no clear victor at a time our state needs a strong decisive leader in Olympia," says a petition campaign to the state legislature at RevoteWA.com. "Washington needs to re-vote the election: one simple ballot style; one clear set of counting rules; with everyone watching very closely."

I have been hesitant about the idea until now, but I am convinced that it is worth the push. We need a re-vote, and we need a governor who is elected justly and verifiably. If Christine Gregoire takes the oath of office next week, she will be an illegitimate governor. She will be a weak chief executive of a state that may not have elected her in the first place.

It is true, as critics have pointed out, a revote would be very expensive. But if anything is justified among the expenditures of state government, it is the adherence to Article 1, Section 19 of the Washington State Constitution: "All Elections shall be free and equal." There are sufficient doubts about the freedom and equality of the vote count in this governor's race that no amount of troubling in a court or legislature about what actually happened on November 2 can resolve. Nothing less than a "free and equal" re-vote can give us a governor whose service will inspire all confidence in the justice by which he or she was elected.

Washington State voters must act now for the integrity of our government. Voters may go to www.revotewa.com and sign the petition to the legislature for a re-vote.

Hans Zeiger is a Seattle Sentinel columnist, president of the Scout Honor Coalition and a student at Hillsdale College in Michigan.

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