Is it me, or is Dino Rossi an idiot?

Well, I guess we all know he's an idiot. But let's make sure.

Right now, the race in Washington State is neck and neck. With 65% reporting, it is 50.5% for Murray and 49.5% for Rossi. Very close.

Of course, the question is, where are the remaining 35% of precincts located? Are they in King County (containing Seattle, and voting by 20+ points for Murray)? Or from Eastern WA, voting significantly for Rossi?

In particular, the entire race at this point can simply be boiled down to a single question: how many ballots from King County are left to be counted?

Murray's campaign says the number is 300,000+, which would likely result in a Murray win. Rossi's campaign says the number is closer to 100,000, which would likely be bad for Murray. (This was just reported on MSNBC.) So who wins will likely be determined by the question: which campaign is right?

Let's look at WA's website.

http://vote.wa.gov/Elections/WEI/VoterTurnout.aspx?ElectionID=37

According to their website, about 375,000 votes in King County have been counted, representing 35% turnout. The site actually says that they have 137,000 ballots on hand that are not counted yet. That makes it sound like Rossi is right: only about 100k ballots left to be counted.

But that makes no sense. Another 137k votes would imply that King county's total turnout is only 512k votes (less than 50% turnout). That would be extremely low turnout -- many other counties ALREADY have 50%+ turnout, and some have 70%+. It would be very strange if King County underperformed the rest of the state by that much. Especially when WA expects King County turnout to reach 68%:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politicsnorthwest/2013329431_king_county_turnout_of_68_look.html

Washington is basically all mail-in voting. That article specifically says that they have over 100k votes that they got today (which presumably matches the uncounted votes on King's website, and that Rossi mentioned). But the article also says that they will get WELL over 100k votes tomorrow, from people who mailed in their ballot today. If we include those (projected) additional votes, there are clearly around 300,000 votes left to be counted in King County. Murray would likely win.

So could Rossi's campaign really be that stupid? Could he really be forgetting to take into account the ballots that will arrive by mail to King County tomorrow? Rossi ran 2 statewide races, and with one he only lost by 133 votes after 3 recounts and an 8 month lawsuit. Shouldn't he know enough about Washington state voting not to make such a stupid mistake?

Or am I missing something? Does anyone actually living in WA have any insight? It looks to me like Murray can easily win this, though the networks are acting like it is completely up in the air.

And a criminal, kind of a criminal idiot savant I guess. He doesn't even pretend not to be a hypocrite and a liar. I bet he thinks it doesn't sound 'manly' to speak sense. WA has not had very good repuke candidates for either Governor or the Senate. He sounds saner than some, so is a bit more presentable on the surface. Our state has many teabagger types, and is regionally divided with East WA being red and West mostly blue, but we don't haven't yet gotten to the level of actually electing rw criminal crazies. Although Rossi has come far too close for comfort, both in his last race for Governor and this one. People actually vote for him. Yuk

So a lot of votes will still be coming in