It must have been a bitter irony for state Republican chairman Luke Esser to find himself spending much of this week defending his ability to count votes properly. After all, ever since the 2004 governor's race recount drama, his party has made a sport of railing against incompetent vote counters in King County. Now here Esser was, the day after he'd declared John McCain the winner in the state Republican caucuses, being called on the carpet by fellow Republican Ed Rollins, the blunt chairman of the Mike Huckabee campaign.

Rollins was furious that Esser apparently stopped counting Republican caucus votes and declared victory for McCain on February 9 with only 87 percent of precincts reporting, 242 votes separating McCain and Huckabee, and 1,500 votes still uncounted.

"This is about the failings of the Washington State Republican Party," Rollins wrote in a heated press release announcing that the Huckabee campaign was sending lawyers to Washington to challenge Esser's methods. "It was Mr. Esser's duty to oversee a fair vote-count process. Washington Republicans know, from bitter experience in the 2004 gubernatorial election, the terrible results that can come from bad ballot counting."

By Tuesday, three days after the caucus, Esser had upped the percentage of votes counted, but he still hadn't counted all of them—the tally on the Republican Party's website was stalled at 96 percent of precincts reporting, a very less than perfect result from a party that has demanded nothing less than perfection from the public servants charged with counting this state's votes in general elections.

National political bloggers were laughing. A local blogger, David Goldstein of www.Horsesass.org, was getting a lot of new traffic on an old post he'd put up revealing a column Esser wrote in 1986 for the University of Washington Daily, in which Esser referred dismissively to voting rights, saying: "Many of the most successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes, sound beatings, etc.) that conservatives have used in the past have been outlawed by busybody judges." Dwight Pelz, the chair of the state Democrats, jokingly offered to help Esser out: He said, via an e-mail leaked to the Seattle Times, that he would be willing to put Esser in touch with Republican nemesis Dean Logan, the former head of King County Elections.

But Esser had a full schedule, talking with a lawyer for Huckabee's campaign on Monday and repeatedly explaining his math and methods to reporters—explanations that included, by Tuesday, the admission that Republicans in four counties had misreported their results to the state party. It was all a rather big mess (or "miscommunication" as Esser put it), but in the end it may not be all that meaningful.

The Republican caucus "vote" is not binding on the delegates who have so far emerged from the process (of which McCain still has more than Huckabee). These delegates can still change their minds at will, and in any case only 18 of them will ultimately end up at the national convention. Nineteen others will be chosen through the Republican primary process on Tuesday, February 19.

Still, Huckabee was not placated. His campaign demanded a full recount. recommended

eli@thestranger.com