Not tired of elections yet? Some could go into overtime

[alienmartian23]

[quote]In at least one race every election night, someone in a newsroom somewhere in America utters a phrase that raises a curtain on weeks of litigation, conference calls, and scrutinizing disputed ballots:

"We could be going into overtime, folks."

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This election year, with public polling showing jump balls in dozens of House contests and a handful of key statewide races, will probably be no different.

The prospect of recounts is a looming possibility not lost on both parties.

The Republican National Committee has launched a fundraising website called "NoMoreFrankens.com" that warns potential donors of consequential recounts like the 2008 Minnesota contest that ended with Democrat Al Franken's swearing-in. "We can't just win," the site proclaims. "We have to win BIG!”
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Even if there are no legal challenges or recounts, it's likely that the results of several contests will not be clear on the morning of November 3rd. And there are plausible scenarios in which the balance of power in the Senate — where Republicans must net 10 seats to regain the majority — is not known for days after Election Day.

Any of the nation's close races could end up subject to legal challenges, but here's a primer on three states where out-of-the-ordinary election rules could make for a complicated aftermath if the vote counts are microscopically close.

Another Evergreen State recount?
In Washington state, for example, Republican Senate candidate Dino Rossi — who was on the losing end of a grueling 2004 gubernatorial recount — could be in for another close election on Tuesday when he tries to oust three-term Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.

Under Washington's vote-by-mail system, ballots are counted if they are postmarked by midnight on Election Day, so some votes won't be counted until Wednesday or Thursday. Washington law requires a recount if the margin of victory is less than one thousand votes and also less than one-fourth of one percent of the total number of votes cast.

A McClatchy/Marist poll conducted last week showed Murray up over Rossi by just one percent.
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Six years ago, Rossi's initially-declared victory in the governor's race was reversed eight weeks later after hundreds of misplaced ballots from heavily Democratic King County were discovered. Democrat Christine Gregoire was declared the winner by a margin of just 133 votes out of a total of more than 2.8 million votes cast.

Katie Blinn, the assistant elections director and an attorney in the Washington Secretary of State's office, said that since 2004 the state has implemented new procedures "to prevent probably one of the biggest issues that occurred in 2004: that ballots were misplaced."
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Blinn said that both parties in the state also learned from the 2004 election to be prepared to mobilize voters who failed to properly fill out their ballots before mailing them. Under the vote-by-mail procedure, a voter completes the ballot and then signs and dates an outer mailing envelope before sending it to a county election office. If a voter fails to sign the mailing envelope for the ballot, the count office will contact him by mail so he can sign it before the results are certified — 21 days after Election Day.

Democrats quickly mobilized to contact voters with signature issues in 2004. "That was a very pivotal post-Election Day campaign effort that they made that probably changed the outcome of that election. This year both parties are geared up to contact those voters (who fail to sign their envelopes)," Blinn said.

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Neither Murray nor Rossi’s campaign was willing to say anything about the steps they are taking to be ready for a recount or disputed election. But Rossi hinted during a conference call with reporters last week that his campaign needs to be prepared, "just in case."

"If this is a very close one, we're going to have people at all the appropriate auditors' offices and watching the King County records and the others with the appropriate people to make sure that everything is done according to the rules," he said. "In '04 we just weren't as prepared as we know we need to be now. Just in case, just in case."

A nailbiter in Illinois
The Senate race in Illinois is one of the tightest contests in America, with recent polls showing two- and three-point leads for Republican Mark Kirk.

Illinois rules do not mandate recounts if the margin between the two candidates is within a certain percentage, but a candidate can request a "discovery recount" if he or she receives 95 percent of the vote total of the candidate declared the winner. The challenging campaign can then pick 25 percent of precincts statewide to be examined.

"Following the discovery recount, if they've found something they wish to pursue. They may file an election contest in the court," explained Ken Menzel, who serves as legal counsel at the Illinois State Board of Elections.[/quote]

[url]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39954670/ns/politics-decision_2010[/url]