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Rossi led Gregoire by only 260 votes in Washington State’s 2004 Governor’s Race. This was the outcome of the first voting results in Washington state’s Governor’s Race, and as with any race this close; calling for a recount was Rossi’s only option, as it was also mandatory since the spread was less than 2,000 votes, and called for a machine recount, since only a hand recount is called if the spread is less than 150. Three counts of nearly 3 million ballots, four lawsuits, and seven weeks later the state of Washington discovered that what was thought to be a simple recount, turned into months of unfairness and disharmony. After the first machine recount Gregoire was only 42 counts behind, which by law, called for yet another count, but this time it had to be by hand. Another three million ballots later, the State of Washington came to its third result: Democrat Christine Gregoire won the race for governor by 130 votes over Republican Dino Rossi. Rossi, along with thousands of supporters, immediately claimed that it wasn’t a clean election. Why wasn’t this a clean election? Well let’s first cover what exactly entails an election.
There are fifty-one different types of voting methods, but only five of which we will consider for the purpose of this paper, along with these methods comes many different problems. Punch card voting which is when voters slide the punch card into a slot, which secures it underneath the pages of the ballot book while each page of the ballot book lists candidates for a particular office. Once the voting is completed, the voter drops the perforated punch card in a sealed ballot box. There is no indication to the voters on the punch card as to which punch corresponds to which candidate. Because the punch card is slipped underneath the ballot book, voters cannot see that the punch as punched out the appropriate chad. Therefore, voters do not receive information as to which candidates they voted for. The second voting method...