So CNN finally writes something about this story. . .

OLYMPIA, Washington (AP) — Republicans dissatisfied with the balloting that installed Democrat Gov. Christine Gregoire alleged Tuesday that 1,108 felons voted illegally in the 2004 election.

Dino Rossi, the failed GOP candidate, is challenging Gregoire’s election in court on the grounds that illegal votes and election workers’ errors irrevocably tainted the results. He is pushing for a new election.

Gregoire won the election by just 129 votes, after a hand recount of 2.9 million ballots. Rossi had won the first two counts.

Democrats say Gregoire is the legitimate governor, and say Republicans don’t have enough evidence to warrant nullifying the election.

Republicans have spent the past couple of months searching for felons who voted despite not having their voting rights restored. Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane announced the 1,108 number on Tuesday. Lane said 884 of those were found in Democrat-leaning King County.

I, personally, believe that there were some shenanigans occurring on the hand recount. I will probably hear cries of “Oh, the Republicans did the same thing in 2000!” but that would be a bad debate to get into, since I lived in South Florida during the 2000 elections and can recall from memory such incredible acts as boxes of as-yet unmarked ballots and ballot punchers being found in the back of a Democratic spokesman’s van.

However, I also believe, regardless, that a re-vote should be ordered in this situation. There is nothing “undermining” about having to do a revote, as some people from both sides claim. In fact, the controversy surrounding this issue probably does more to discredit the government than a re-vote would. Wiping the slate clean would give people a sense of actuality in the results.

In the end, however, the people don’t owe the government or the people running for positions in government anything. It should be the first priority of the election commission to prevent fraud and verify the actual people’s choice; not to be “fair” to one candidate or another. If Ukraine could do it, why can’t we?

An interesting opinion can be found here. From a comment on that article:

The Gregoire camp is like a football team that just got the benefit of very sloppy call and is in a dead hurry to get the play off before it can be reviewed. ???????Move-on??????? is just a Democrat code word for ???????let????????s pretend we can get away with this???????

But nowadays, football games have a lot of cameras and video feeds that referees look at to review calls and mistakes before the game continues. That’s why elections were so flawed in the 1800’s and early 1900’s especially. Take a look at this post describing Republican vote procedural reform, something the author thinks is obstructive:

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that, in terms of election reform, the best we can hope for from this Congress is that it will do nothing at all. While the Republicans are proposing measures that would place new obstacles in the path of citizens wishing the vote in the name of preventing fraud, the Democrats appear to be proposing a combination of things that have no chance of passing and things that will make the transition to better systems more difficult. If constructive changes are to be made, they’re more likely to come from the states.

While I have no problem with the states regulating their own election law, that basic verification to prevent fraud is considered a hamper to voters is absurd. Did the Australian ballot make it harder for parties to get people to vote? Sure did, but that’s because people could no longer buy votes. How terrible to make sure that someone is a U.S. citizen before voting in the federal elections!