Exciting news from the hand count in the Washington state race for governor. You'll recall that our community joined together in early December to support Christine Gregoire in her quest for fairness in the electoral process. Well, the preliminary results of the hand count are in and Christine holds an eight-vote lead over her opponent, Dino Rossi:

The stunning turnaround was reported late Tuesday by the head of the state Democratic Party, who said party officials' analysis of hand-counted returns from King County — the last county to finish the grueling process — showed that Gregoire had eclipsed the dwindling margin that Republican Dino Rossi has held since Election Day.

This may seem like a small margin; however, there are still over 700 recently-discovered ballots that have not been added to the total count. These ballots come from the traditionally-Democratic King County and estimates indicate that those votes will tally in Gregoire's favor. Official results of the race will be announced today at 3:30pm.