Double dose of good news for Koster

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Attorney general candidate Chris Koster got a double-dose of good news Wednesday as ethics complaints against him were dismissed and his narrow primary election lead stabilized as straggling votes in St. Louis County were counted.

Koster, a state senator who switched from the Republican to Democratic party a year ago, declared victory in the primary late Tuesday. But it's so close that state Rep. Margaret Donnelly said she is considering whether to request a recount.

Republican St. Louis County elections director Joseph Goeke said the actual number of votes still to be tallied Wednesday was 611. But they were split among Democrat and Republican ballots.

Most of the late-counted votes came from touch-screen machines that had not been properly closed down by poll workers, but the machines had remained secure overnight, Goeke said.

After all those votes were counted Wednesday, Koster held to a 786-vote margin from the 669,516 ballots cast.

When races are decided by less than 1 percentage point, state law allows the second-place candidate to request a re-count. That can occur after the results are officially certified. The last statewide re-count came in a Republican state auditor primary in 2006.

Also still uncounted are an unknown number of provisional ballots cast statewide. Voters are given provisional ballots when their eligibility is in question, and election officials later determine whether the ballots should be counted.

Provisional ballots have not historically been a significant factor in Missouri elections. In the February presidential primary, for example, more than 1.4 million people voted -- almost twice the turnout of Tuesday's party primaries. In that February election, just 1,242 provisional ballots were cast and only 426 ended up counting, said Laura Egerdal, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.

By Wednesday, Koster was meeting with supporters during a lunch in Kansas City and had already turned his focus to the November general election where he will face Republican Sen. Michael Gibbons, of Kirkwood.

Dogged throughout the Democratic primary about fundraising and whether he was a true-blue Democrat, Koster also got a boost Wednesday with the Missouri Ethics Commission's announcement that it had dismissed nine complaints filed against Koster, his attorney general's campaign and a separate political committee that has donated money to him.

The Ethics Commission said it concluded that the information it obtained "does not support a determination that there are at present reasonable grounds to believe that a violation of the law has occurred."

The complaints centered on claims that Koster's paid campaign staffers had coordinated the shuffling of money among various committees so that big donors could give more than otherwise allowed by the state's contribution limits.

Koster has said his fundraising was legal and contended that the ethics complaints filed against him were politically motivated. In a written statement released Wednesday, Koster said the ethics complaint dismissals were not surprising.

"Today's action by the Missouri Ethics Commission puts to rest what has been a political stunt all along," he said.

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Associated Press correspondent David A. Lieb in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.