(Host) The Democratic primary race for governor heads for court this morning.
A Washington Superior Court judge has scheduled a courtroom conference to work out the details for how the recount will be conducted.
Doug Racine asked that the ballots be counted again. The official count showed him losing to Peter Shumlin by 197 votes and he wants that outcome to be confirmed by the court.
But the second round of ballot counting could cause some delays as officials prepare for the general election.
Secretary of State Deb Markowitz says her office understands the challenges and has prepared for them.
(Markowitz) "There is a right to this recount and it’s our feeling in this office that an administrative issue – like getting the ballots out on time – shouldn’t be part of the consideration. We’ll find a way to make sure we meet the requirements of the law. And we have."
(Host) The issue is how long it will take before the vote is certified by the court.
It could take a week to ten days. And that will make it difficult to print ballots and have them ready for town clerks to distribute.
State law calls for voters to be able to cast their ballots as early as September 20th. And there also needs to be time to get ballots to overseas voters. That was the rationale for moving the primary from September 14th to August 24th.
Markowitz says her office will provide town clerks with computer files of the ballots.
(Markowitz) "They’ll have a PDF of the ballot, the same PDF that we send to the printer, that they’ll be able to print out and send overseas and use for early voters. We have a procedure in our law that allows remarking ballots using bipartisan pairs of officials to put them onto the card stock that’s machine read, or they can be hand-counted depending on what the town chooses to do."
(Host) Markowitz was one of the five Democrats on the primary ballot.
She finished the race almost 700 votes behind Shumlin.