A Christmas Present for the State of Washington

In two previous vote counts since Nov 2nd, Washington state repubs claimed victory for their candidate for governor Dino Rossi - and tried to block every attempt at including votes that should have been counted (Do you notice it's always the repubs that do not want every vote counted?).

Later today, Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire will be officially declared the winner by the state, in spite of the repubs unending tactics to steal the election:

Democrats have claimed victory in the race for Washington governor by a razor-thin margin of:

...8 votes (note: out of nearly 3 million)...

... citing preliminary results of a hand recount they say puts Christine Gregoire in front for the first time. Republicans maintained the race was still too close to call...

The stunning turnaround was reported late Tuesday by the head of the state Democratic Party, who said party officials' analysis of hand-counted returns from King County, the last county to finish the grueling process showed that Gregoire had eclipsed the dwindling margin that Republican Dino Rossi has held since Election Day...

The crowd chanted "No more fraud!" They held signs saying "Welcome to Ukraine" and wore orange, a tribute to the signature color of demonstrators in Ukraine who protested a fraud-marred election there.

Merry Christmas to my neighbor state to the north. Yes, lots of us progressives celebrate Christmas, and this is a nice present under the tree.