Governor Chris Gregoire made it official today—there will be a special election to fill US Rep. Jay Inslee's vacant seat in the old 1st Congressional District. (Inslee resigned last month to dedicate his time to the governor's race.)

Redistricting  reworked the 1st—where it used to a be a safe Democratic seat stretching from the Microsoft suburbs west into Kitsap and North into Snohomish, it's now a legit swing district, trading the hippie dippy Kitsap Peninsula for a rural turn in eastern Skagit and Whatcom Counties north to the Canadian border.

All of the 426,000 people in the old 1st District (which now overlaps with parts of the new 1st, 2nd, and 7th) will get to vote in the August top-two primary and then the November general for a short-term seat which Inslee's temporary replacement will hold from December 6 to January 3, 2013. On a separate line on their ballots, those voters will also be voting in the full-term election for their new rep, who will take office on January 3. For those voters who are both in the old 1st and the new 1st, they will be looking at the same list of names twice. Indeed, the pack that's currently running in the new 1st, six Democrats and two Republicans, will be running to both serve out Inslee's seat on one ballot line and also running on a separate line to take the new seat in January. (In the other overlapped districts, voters will be looking at one batch of candidates for their new district in full-term election, while voting for the 1st crop in the short-term election.)

So—and this is likely given the old Blue first vs. the new swing-turf 1st—two liberal Democrats could potentially face off in the short-term election in the old 1st general election, while a more moderate Democrat could be facing off against the Republican candidate in the new 1st general election.

Katie Blinn, Co-Director of Elections for the Secretary of State, says her office is currently trying to figure out the best way to lay out the ballot for those voters who have to cast votes in both the short-term and full-term elections. Will voters think there's been a printing error and drop off in the race that appears second on the ballot?

The cost of the election for the state is about $790,000. Counties can bill it to the state because it's a special election to fill a vacancy in Congress. (If the special election wasn't happening, Blinn points out, the cost would be around the same for the regular old election, but the counties would have to pay for it.)