Seattle will get its advisory vote on replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct -- and with its results, perhaps one more card to play in the high-stakes game over state Route 99.

Two Seattle City Council members pushed this week to halt the balloting after the state Department of Transportation, Gov. Christine Gregoire and legislative leaders said Wednesday that a city replacement tunnel design was unsafe.

The $3.4 billion, four-lane tunnel option is one of two offered to city voters in the all-mail, March 13 ballot; the other choice is a new $2.8 billion, six-lane elevated highway. Once the department rejected the tunnel option, Gregoire and other Olympia leaders said they were proceeding with the elevated highway.

Wednesday, City Council President Nick Licata was one of two council members ready to junk the ballot.

"We're going to be asking our citizens to give advice to someone who's already told us they're not going to listen to it," Licata said Wednesday. Peter Steinbrueck, another council member, agreed.

But Licata is traveling, and would be out of town for a council vote Tuesday -- the last day the city could back out -- and Steinbrueck was unable to persuade other members to consider it.

"People felt we needed to move ahead with this, is the bottom line," Steinbrueck said Thursday. "It's in the works, campaigns are flying, and money's being spent. I haven't changed my view, but I couldn't get the necessary majority to rescind the vote."

The council majority and Mayor Greg Nickels -- all tunnel supporters -- want to proceed with the advisory vote despite Gregoire's promise to go ahead with the elevated highway -- regardless of what voters think.

The city's strategy is that a favorable advisory vote for the tunnel would provide proof that Seattleites want the tunnel the state is reluctant to build, and allow the city to challenge plans for the elevated replacement.

Although polls have suggested the tunnel doesn't command a majority among voters, Thursday the council majority apparently was willing to risk it.

"To cancel (the vote), we're saying then that the discussions are over, and I think we need to keep the discussion going," said Councilman Richard McIver, a tunnel supporter.

"If we don't have the vote, we're throwing our cards away now. If we anted up to be in the game, we may as well play the game out."

"There are a lot of legislators that still have to be elected in Seattle," McIver said, and Councilwoman Jan Drago said "it would be hard for the state to ignore the voice of the people."

If both measures fail, there may be more serious talk about dispersing viaduct traffic to surface streets and buses, and removing it for good, a proposal the state also has rejected, and if that won't work, "we may be back to a tunnel," Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis said.

Even if the vote were canceled, the city still would have to pay for the printing and initial processing of 339,000 ballots, which will be mailed out next week. The election, including vote-counting, will cost about $1 million.

Nickels said he'll support whichever option voters pick, assuming one or the other gets a clear favorable vote.

Councilman David Della acknowledges that the vote may not be conclusive. City residents will vote up or down on either the elevated highway or the tunnel, separately, raising the possibility that either option could receive a favorable majority of the votes cast for it.

"I've been in meetings where people have said to vote no on both," Della said. Friends of Seattle, an urban-issues group, is advocating just that.

Gregoire spokeswoman Holly Armstrong reiterated Thursday that the governor intends to push ahead with an elevated highway regardless of the outcome of the advisory ballot.

Gregoire pushed the city into having the vote, but she'll ignore the results because "this is not the vote she called for in December," Armstrong said.

It includes what she thinks is an unacceptable tunnel option and sets up the possibility of both options passing or failing, Armstrong said.

Will Seattle voters be wasting their time casting ballots? "That's a decision Seattle voters have to make," Armstrong said.