A Sunday editorial in The Tacoma News Tribune says the unchecked provisional ballots, in particular, are legitimate cause for Republican Dino Rossi's legal challenge of Democrat Christine Gregoire's 129-vote victory in the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election.

....the counting of unscreened provisional ballots in King County – appears to justify the court review Rossi is seeking. It could prove fatal to Gregoire’s precariously slim margin.

Provisional ballots are given to would-be voters whose registration cannot be immediately verified by poll workers. They are supposed to be sequestered until election officials can confirm that the people in question are in fact entitled to vote.

But at several polling places in King County, people who’d been given provisional ballots were allowed – accidentally, we hope – to feed them into vote-counting machines without the required screening. Once through the machines, the provisional ballots cannot be retrieved or distinguished from the ordinary ballots.

A few dozen might not have made a difference. But Dean Logan, King County’s elections chief, acknowledged last week that as many as 350 provisional ballots could have been counted by error.

It may be true, as Logan said, that most of these ballots – if checked – would have been found to be valid. But they weren’t checked. And there’s no reason to assume that people who might have deliberately bypassed the verification process were legitimate voters. Given the wispiness of Gregoire’s margin, Rossi can’t be faulted for asking the judiciary to take a hard look at these problems.

His challenge may not change the outcome, but it should give the Legislature extra incentive to do what it can to prevent such irregularities in future elections.

Presumably, both Seattle dailies will be printing editorials tomorrow, directly addressing why they are either for or against Rossi's decision to contest the election.

Hat tip: alert Sound Politics reader/commenter Laura.

UPDATE, with a hat tip to SP commenter Deborah: in an editorial, today's King County Journal endorses a fresh take on the WA Guv election, "Who's Our Governor? We Need a Re-vote." By the time this is all over, Gregoire may be wishing she'd agreed to Rossi's proposal for a re-vote before Rossi filed suit to contest, on Friday.

On another front, this week's "Egg All Over Face" media award for baseless commentary on the Guv Race goes to Josh Feit, of Seattle's Sandinsita weekly, The Stranger. In his "CounterIntel" column, Feit takes Gregoire harshly to task for not demanding that Rossi concede.

She should demand that he concede, rather than allowing him the breathing room to frame the debate with his calls for a revote.

As if such a move by Gregoire would make a bit of difference. Not to mention the obvious political liabilities of Gregoire urging Rossi's concession when there are so many unresolved questions and broad and justifiable public mistrust of the election results in Washington state. While Feit's column admittedly hit the streets Thurs. Jan. 6, a day before Rossi announced he would contest, it had already been reported earlier in the week that Rossi would do just that.

Yet, Feit sophomorically gripes:

Basically, Rossi's initiated a PR war in an attempt to instigate some sort of 'people's coup to intimidate lawmakers and overrun the legal process."

No, Josh, as you probably know by now from reading the papers, Rossi has filed suit in Chelan County court to contest the election, as permitted under law, and he is citing specific mistakes and errors which quite possibly may have affected the outcome of this 129-vote "victory" for Gregoire.

Memo to Stranger "brain trust" (Dan Savage and Tim Keck): time for a new political columnist? No I'm not applying, thanks. Maybe ex-Seattle alternative newsie Tom Robbins?