Despite the terrible effort by King County to manage a smooth election, Republican Dino Rossi should concede to Christine Gregoire. The state needs to move on and get down to the business of building better business relationships, dealing with traffic and focusing on reducing government spending.

But the continued mismanagement of voting needs to be dealt with at the state level. King County’s election office needs to be completely revamped and Executive Ron Sims, in addition to being reprimanded for his lack of oversight, should fire county elections officer Dean Logan immediately and call for a citizen’s committee to look at the elections board’s policy and procedures.

There is no excuse in any county for the lack of attention to detail and the differing results are a clear indication of indifference to the voting public. Only under scrutiny was the elections office able to find all the votes … or did they? All votes should have been found at the time of the actual election voting, not at the time of the first, second or even third recount.

It is also obvious that a good many of the state’s voters are unhappy with the way things are going and it will take significant effort from Gregoire to bring the voting public to trust in the election process.

As for Mr. Rossi, I would think there are numerous opportunities in the future. Executive Sims will be running next year and Sen. Maria Cantwell is up for re-election soon.