Election Trial: Will The Republicans’ Allegations Be Enough?

By Rebecca CookAssociated Press Writer WENATCHHE (AP) – Every morning during the first week of Washington state’s election trial, Fredi Simpson drove through the quiet streets of her small town and claimed a third-row seat to watch history being made. She watched Republican and Democratic attorneys argue the fate of the closest governor’s election in national history. Republican Dino Rossi and the state GOP are challenging the 129-vote victory of Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire in the 2004 election. Rossi won the first two counts, only to lose a final, hand recount. Republicans want the court to nullify the election, prompting a new matchup between Gregoire and Rossi. On Friday, Republicans rested their case and Democrats moved for immediate dismissal. Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges denied the motion, meaning that Democrats will defend the election when the trial resumes on Tuesday. Simpson, chairwoman of the Chelan County Republicans, believes Rossi will win in court. But even if she doesn’t get the new election she wants, Simpson thinks the GOP has won just by bringing the challenge to trial. “We’ve exposed King County, we’ve exposed what they’ve been doing all this time,” Simpson said. “I would like to believe it’s not fraud, but total incompetence is not acceptable in voting. … We have to take voting more seriously.” Airing King County’s dirty laundry has been one of three main parts to the Republicans’ case. Over the past week, Republican attorneys have argued that election officials’ errors, illegal voters and possible fraud stole the election from Rossi. Sometime soon, Bridges will decide whether they’ve presented the “clear and convincing” evidence he said would be needed to overturn an election. Throughout the trial, Bridges has ruled on skirmishes over whether to include evidence on the record. Consistently he has ruled on the side of inclusion, even when he has some doubts. Bridges explained on Thursday he wants the state Supreme Court to have a complete factual record on appeal, so the justices can decide without sending the case back to trial court. Both sides have vowed to appeal if they lose. “I’ve enjoyed having you folks in front of me immensely,” he told the lawyers. “But I don’t want to see any of you again.” Bridges runs his courtroom firmly, with a surprising sense of humor. Though he hasn’t tipped his hand, he has jumped in with questions for witnesses, giving at least some hint of what he wants to know. Bridges questioned one of the GOP’s star witnesses, Nicole Way, the mail ballot supervisor in King County. Republicans have focused their election challenge on the Democratic stronghold of King County, the state’s most populous county. Way testified that she’d raised concerns last spring about the county’s inability to track ballots. She also said she and her boss agreed to submit an inaccurate report to the King County canvassing board, showing that all absentee ballots had been accounted for even though they weren’t. In an earlier deposition, Way said she knew at the time the number was wrong. On the witness stand, though, she said she didn’t know the flaws for sure until county workers found unopened ballots in boxes months later. “Do you have any sense in your mind as you sit here this afternoon that that number is accurate or not?” Bridges asked Way about a number on the report. “I don’t know,” Way said. Bridges asked if she thought it was accurate on Nov. 17. “When we filled out this report, to the best of my knowledge, that number was right,” Way said. Democrats said the GOP’s claims of fraud fell apart as Way answered the questions. “If they ever had any hope, it just vanished,” Democratic attorney Kevin Hamilton said. But Republicans said King County officials’ errors allowed fraud to occur. “We believe there was illegal action that included stuffing some ballot boxes,” GOP attorney Dale Foreman said. “Total chaos and incompetence in King County allowed this to happen.” Later in the trial, Bridges asked questions to understand the GOP’s theory of proportional deduction. Republican attorneys want the judge to accept their theory of subtracting illegal votes from Rossi or Gregoire according to how their precincts voted. So if 10 illegal votes were found in a precinct that went for Gregoire 60 percent and Rossi 40 percent, they would subtract six from Gregoire’s total and four from Rossi’s. It depends on the exact number of votes the court declares illegal, but Republicans hope this method will show Rossi actually won. Democrats said the method is flawed, because you can’t tell how individuals voted based solely on how their neighbors voted, that’s what experts call “ecological fallacy.” University of Washington political scientist Christopher Adolph said it would be like trying to estimate Ichiro Suzuki’s batting average from the .270 batting average of the Mariners and the American League. “If we assumed that, we would conclude that Ichiro had a mediocre season,” when in fact he batted .372 last year, Adolph said. “I think anyone would tell us, this is a very dumb way to figure out how Ichiro Suzuki batted last year.” When GOP expert witness Jonathan Katz testified later, Bridges asked him about Ichiro. “Is there a fallacy with this example?” Bridges asked Katz, a Cal Tech political science professor. “It’s logically possible,” Katz said. But, Katz said, while it’s impossible to know for sure how secret ballots were cast, the court can take what it knows about illegal voters, their precinct, and use that to estimate how their votes went. Bridges has occasionally joked about the weight of the trial — telling attorneys they look tired, for example, or saying Friday after rubbing his forehead, “I’ve had this constant headache for six months.” But he’s clearly taking the historic nature of this election challenge seriously. Close elections around the country could be affected by the ultimate outcome of Rossi’s quest for a new election. The 2004 governor’s election has been compared to a 500-year flood. But, Bridges said, the rains could come again. “My focus here,” Bridges said, “is based in part on a recognition that this is going to happen again, an election like this.”