SEATTLE, Dec. 23 - With all the votes tallied after a recount in the roller coaster race for governor, Christine O. Gregoire, the Democrat who trailed in the campaign and in a previous recount, won by 130 votes as battered Republicans demanded more vote counting and vowed to use every legal weapon to reverse the extraordinary turnaround.

"This is the biggest display of democracy that I have ever seen," Ms. Gregoire, the state attorney general, said at a televised news conference Thursday evening at the State Capitol in Olympia, which was ringed by Republican protestors shouting "count all the votes!"

Ha-ha. HA-HA!!!

But an end was anything but certain, as Republicans made it clear that they did not consider the results a legitimate victory for Ms. Gregoire and said they were already considering contesting the election.

Taking a page from their counterparts in Florida in 2000, state Republicans quickly alleged that the votes of soldiers stationed overseas were among hundreds of rejected votes for Mr. Rossi, a former state senator, and should now be counted.

"If you can change the rules for the chairman of the King County Council," said Chris Vance, chairman of the state Republican Party, referring to Larry Phillips, a Democratic councilman whose vote was among the 735 ballots reviewed in King County on Thursday, "then you can change the rules for a marine wounded in Falluja."

Republican officials, accompanied by five veterans waving American flags, went into a meeting of the King County Canvassing Board on Thursday and lobbied the board to consider almost 100 rejected ballots for Mr. Rossi in King County.

What a bunch of yokels these Washington state Rethugs are! Everyone knows that when you go to disrupt a County Canvassing Board meeting you need at least a small, potentially violent mob. And any strategist even vaguely familiar with the formula "More military/militaristic trappings = Better/more right" would have arranged for a tank to plow through the door, preferably a tank with the head of an Iraqi insurgent mounted atop a stake affixed to the hood. Barring that arrangement, why not just produce the actual corpse of a Marine killed in Falluja, drag it into the Canvassing Board meeting room, hoist it onto the table, have one of the "veterans" place his flag in the corpse's stiff hand, and so declare "Dino Rossi" the natural and immutable Governor of the State of Washington?