Kevin Carns

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.

Everyone is a pundit these days, telling anyone who will listen who they think will win the governor’s races, the 8th Congressional District race, the presidency and their own local elections. So PolitickerWA.com decided to help fan the flames of the state of punditry by giving some prominent political people a venue in which to share their prediction skills.

PolitickerWA.com received predictions on a handful of important races across the state from a number of elected officials, staffers, bloggers and academics. See what they had to say below.

Washington State Republican Party Chair Luke Esser predicted a two point win for his side in the governor’s race, with Dino Rossi (R-Sammamish) defeating Gov. Chris Gregoire (D-Olympia) 51 to 49, a six-point win in the 8th Congressional District for Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Auburn) over Darcy Burner (D-Carnation), 53-47, adding, “I think the Harvard Hoax has really hurt Burner.”