Election Nightmare? No Murray-Rossi winner on Nov. 2

With the whole country watching, Washington's peculiar way of running elections could be on full display next week. Republicans expect to make big gains Nov. 2, taking back the House and possibly the Senate. The GOP needs to win 10 seats to control the upper chamber, which is the reason the tight race between Sen. Patty Murray and Dino Rossi is being watched closely.
Here's the problem: If the contest is as close as polls suggest, it's entirely possible we won't know who the winner is Tuesday night. That's because in the Evergreen State, voters only to have mailed their ballots by Election Day. In other states the ballots have to be received by Nov. 2. David Ammons, spokesman for the secretary of state, says only about 60 percent of the ballots in Washington will have been counted by Election Night.

By Chris Grygiel

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

King County is where one out of every three Washington voters live. It's also the place where during the ridiculously close, contested 2004 gubernatorial election that Rossi ultimately lost, problems with keeping track of and counting ballots surfaced. Kim Van Ekstrom, spokeswoman for King County Elections, said her shop figures it will have counted up to 45 percent of the votes by Tuesday night. That means more than 350,000 ballots could still be in the mail or not yet tallied come Tuesday.
Here's what to look for Election Night. If Rossi is getting more than about 40 percent of the vote in King County, he'll probably be in decent shape, as he'll likely run ahead of Murray in most of the rest of the state.
In '04, when Rossi ultimately lost by just 133 votes, he reached 40 percent in King County. In the 08 rematch with Chris Gregoire, he only got 36 percent of the votes in the state's largest county. Gregoire won easily.
Ultimately Murray and Rossi might not know who won for days. If that happens, get ready for the national spotlight to turn to the northwest corner of the country