Why Aren’t They Counting In Washington?
Somehow the GOP is stuck on 87 percent of precincts reporting in Washington as midnight West Coast approaches, with McCain and Huckabee within a couple hundred votes.
How long can it take to count a caucus?
Kansas is one thing. If McCain can’t carry Washington? That’s a stank nasty result.
UPDATE: Washington apparently stopped counting at 87 percent… but still declared John McCain the winner. I’m with Josh. This is fishy as hell.
UPDATE II: Huck is not conceding the state and has sent lawyers to Washington:
The Huckabee campaign is deeply disturbed by the obvious irregularities in the Washington State Republican precinct caucuses. It is very unfortunate that the Washington State Party Chairman, Luke Esser, chose to call the race for John McCain after only 87 percent of the vote was counted. According to CNN, the difference between Senator McCain and Governor Huckabee is a mere 242 votes, out of more than 12,000 votes counted—with another 1500 or so votes, apparently, not counted. That is an outrage.
UPDATE III: This is unbelievable. This Esser dude did some back-of-the-envelope math and consulted his gut and just declared McCain the winner.
Esser said he declared McCain the winner after calculating what Huckabee would have to win in the remaining precincts in order to take the lead. And even with being generous with a forecast of Huckabee votes, and purposefully assuming McCain’s support dropped significantly in the late counts, McCain still looked like the winner…
‘Maybe it would have been safer if I hadn’t said anything. But it was an exciting and historic day for the state and I thought if I was confident about what the outcome would be I should share that with the people who had gone out to their caucuses.’