Manual recount advances Rossi’s lead

PORT ORCHARD — Winnie Flores-Logan is living the surreal life. Flores-Logan, the Kitsap County’s chief deputy auditor, has just overseen the county’s second recount for the governor’s race. While she is overseeing the race here in Kitsap, her husband, Dean Logan, is doing the same in King County.

By Thursday evening, the votes were in for Kitsap.

By a manual and machine recount, the result in Kitsap is the same — Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi was the highest vote-getter. The elections division in Port Orchard conducted a manual recount last week of the state’s most contested — and closest — governor’s race in history.

In the second recount, a manual recount, Rossi picked up 82 votes to Democratic contender Christine Gregoire’s 72 new votes and Libertarian Ruth Bennett’s seven additional votes.

In all, the county’s totals for the governor’s race were Rossi, 57,693; Gregoire, 56,164 and Bennett, 3,090.

In Kitsap County, the ballots have voters draw a straight line with a No. 2 pencil to mark their candidate. The new votes were from ballots on which the markings were too light for the tallying machine to pick up, she said.

“It’s surreal,” Flores-Logan said of the race for the governor’s mansion. ”We’re really proud of the way things turned out here in Kitsap County. We were able to do the manual recount in two days.”

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