House Republican Organizational Committee

State Rep. John Ahern

The Washington State House Republican Organizational Committee has retained a law firm to file a temporary restraining order to top the counting of ballots in Spokane County’s 6th Legislative District race between Rep. John Ahern (R-Spokane) and John Driscoll (D-Spokane), which Driscoll leads by 63 votes.

The restraining order, if successful, will stop vote counting until a judge hears a lawsuit the HROC is also filling to gain access as observers to all 7,000 original ballots in the district that had been made duplicates. The Republicans say that they want to make sure that, in the recount, each voter’s intent was correctly interpreted onto the duplicate ballot, and that the original ballots will be viewed before votes are certified on Nov. 25.

HROC executive director Kevin Carns tells PolitickerWA.com that there were three errors among the 200 ballots that were reviewed this morning per the decision of Monday night’s canvassing board meeting, which split 2-1 along party lines to keep all 7,000 ballots from being tested.

Two weeks ago in Denver, Washington state Speaker of the House Frank Chopp (D-Seattle) remained hopeful of the Democrats' long term strategy for maintaining a large House majority, but after August's "top two" primary, House Republicans are as hopeful as ever.

Kevin Carns, the Director of the House Republican Organizational Committee, told PolitickerWA.com that, after analyzing an extensive series of numbers, House Republicans should be able to reduce the Democratic majority by at least two seats in 2008.

"From a macro perspective we are in very, very good shape," Carns said. "We are in a strong position to pick up a couple seats minimum."