Posted on 06/05/2005 10:38:06 AM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Washington State Judge To Rule Monday On Governor's Win
June 5, 2005 7:31 a.m. EST
Douglas Maher - All Headline News Staff Reporter
WENATCHEE, WA (AHN)- The long contested election of 2004 in the state of Washington will take a new turn come Monday when Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges will announce his decision on whether the results were valid amid accusations of massive fraud.
Gov. Christine Gregoire has not attended a single day of the trial that has gripped the state for the last month and is making no plans to attend the reading of the decision.
Gregoire said "I am doing my best to run the state and ignore the trial."
Republican Dino Rossi is trying to have the election results from November declared invalid. Rossi won the first count and a machine recount, but his Democratic opponent won by 129 votes in a hand recount of 2.9 million ballots.
Judge John Bridges allowed Republicans to use "proportional analysis" to prove their case that illegal votes swayed the election.
Bridges delivered a pre-trial ruling, this one favoring Democrats. Bridges ruled parties would not be able to use county records known as crediting records to prove who voted. Democrats argued there were too many errors in the records and the judge agreed.
Republicans were be able to argue that about one-thousand illegal votes, mostly by felons, should be subtracted in proportion to the votes for governor in a precinct. That is, if there were ten illegal votes in a precinct that voted 60 percent for Gregoire then six should be subtracted from her total and four from Republican Dino Rossi.
Republicans hope the trial will set aside the election of Gregoire who took office with a 129-vote margin on the third count.
Any change in the results will not proclaim a new winner, just a new election.
Rossi hopes to win a rematch this fall.
Copyright © All Headline News - All rights reserved.
My prediction: We lose. The judge will scold King County, and say that he thinks the election is a mess, and that we don't really know who won, but that we need to prove that Rossi would have won, and we didn't do that convincingly enough.
It SHOULD be that if there is more bad votes then the margin of victory, there needs to be a revote. But since, apparently, the judge has ruled otherwise, we will lose at this level.
Not sure what the State SC will do.
Anyhow, not my wishes, but my prediction none-the-less.
I agree, I doubt the Judge will order a re-vote. The best that can be done is to beat her over the head with this for four years and maybe demand Jimmuh Carter come supervise next time.
I think we are toast. They did not prove that Rossi would have won. Only that he likely would have.
Gregoire should be tossed out for beng so ugly. Ugly women make bad governors.
I think that the WSC may, but I doubt Bridges will. His standard was all wrong to begin with. In virtually every other case like this, if there is more bad votes then the margin of victory, revote. It happened in North Carolina Agracultural Commissioners race, where the Republican was ahead by 3,000 votes, and there were 5,000 votes that got screwed up in a heavily Republican area. But they decided that there was no way to know for sure how they voted, so a revote was necessary.
But since Bridges decided we needed to 'prove' Rossi would have won, it seems to me to be difficult. It is virtually impossible to 'prove' who won. The Republicans did the best they could have to show that it was very, very, very likely, but the kind of 'proof' that is required in this case just is almost impossible to prove.
The judge could change his mind, and I hope he does, because without it, we don't really have an election challenge statute. It means absolutely nothing if that is the standard, because proving it the way you would prove a murder is as virtually impossible.
The democrats are right when they call porportional analisys 'guessing', and their solution, 'ask each illegal voter how they voted', doesn't pass the laugh test, and that doesn't even solve the problem of having more votes then voters in pro-Greogire precincts and less votes then voters in pro-Rossi precincts. There literally is no legal remedy under that situation (which does exist here) according to that standard I can see.
It is possible, and it has happened before, that the judge will change his mind. But without him doing that, I don't see how we get anywear. That's what I get for living in this state.
Exactly. Read my last post for my detailed thoughts on that fact.
It shouldn't be neccessary to 'prove' that he would have won. It should be that we can prove we don't know who won. But as long as that isn't the standard, I don't know what we should do.
Unfortunately, I also agree.
The judge will say the election was a mess and that King County ought to clean up their act (in other words, he'll shake his finger at them and say "Naughty Children") in future elections.
But he'll refuse to over-turn the election on the basis that the GOP didn't make the case that the errors were glaring enough.
However, I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.
Let's recruit Rossi to take out Cantwell for senate
"That's what I get for living in this state."
Hey, well, I live in NJ, so you've got my sympathy.
As I just said in another post: The standard was stupid to begin with. The Democrats aren't even bothering to argue that we know who won and it was Greogire. They are literally arguing that we don't know who won and that means Gregoire stays.
It should be:
If X (Illegal votes, books that don't match up etc.) is greater then Y (margin of victory), then revote.
But since it's not, apparently, we will not win, at least on this level.
Not happening, and I don't want him to.
Rossi won by downplaying his social stances, which are very conservative in this very socially liberal state. He couldn't do that effectively in a Senate race.
I'd rather him hound Gregoire for the next 3 1/2 years and then beat her ass in '08.
I agree.
Rossi has a reservoir of good-will from his guberantorial bid.
Cantwell seems vulnerable.
After the recent fiasco in the Senate, we need more GOP senators to ensure that President Bush can get his judicial picks through the Senate.
Hehe, yah, I think you live in one of the only two states that can make ANY claim of being as bad or worse then Washington in the whole fraud category.
I know most of Rossi's staff, I've met Rossi on several occasions, and I would be STUNNED if he changed his mind and ran for Senate.
As I said, he wants to be Governor, and besides, he was able to downplay his social stances, which are very conservative, in this very socially liberal state. He couldn't do that in a senat race. He may well lose.
Rossi for Governor, ASAP, be it now or in '08.
Diane Tebelious or Mike McGavick for Senate.
That will work too, I guess.
It would be nice to have one seantor from our state worth a damn!
Here is the article I told you that I read yesterday. I guess the Republicans did have to prove that Rossi would have won had there been no election errors (or fraud). Not good.
Now...how do we get two decent senators.....
I see. Instead of proving that there's no way to know who won, we were expected to prove that Rossi, in fact, did win. It sounds like a burden of proof that nobody could meet. I'm getting the sense that a fair number of informed folks expect the state supremes might overturn this on appeal if we lose in Wenatchee.
Any competent judge and lawyer can read anything they want into the law, therefore, Rossi will lose regardless of the evidence for or against his side. The precedent has long been set.
So my guess is that Bridges administers a "stinging" and "severe" (to use the largely meaningless words that the 'Rats proposed for censuring Clinton instead of impeachment) tongue-lashing and rebuke to the King Co. election officials for their "sloppy" and "careless" work. The 'Rats will hang their heads in shame or nod them in agreement, and swear on a stack of Bibles and bureaucrats to "do better the next time" and never, ever, screw up like this again. Then outside the courtroom they'll be high-fiving and laughing about how they put another stolen election in the books.
I'd really, really like Bridges to prove me wrong and restore some of my faith in the judicial system, but I have my doubts.
I doubt if Rossi would have much chance against Cantwell, nor will any Republican. This is Washington State, tried and true blue. Seattle politics pretty much carries the state, and a look at how its gone in national races the last few election cycles gives you a pretty good idea about how conservative Republican candidates would fare at that level.
Rossi knows this is his shot. I don't think he'll get another. If there is a re-match in '08 against Fraudoire, it will be a 'Rat win in the 3-5 point range. Why? Four years is a lifetime in politics. Fraudoire will have had that time to patch things up with reluctant voters from the last campaign (look at the liberal legislation being ramrodded through the state legislature already). The other reason is that in four years the memory of this robbery will have largely faded from the sheeples' minds. Rossi then may well be another whozat Republican in the public "mind", tilting at windmills.
I know you have to try, but at this point I can't get too excited about chances in a re-match with Fraudoire in '08. Rossi has to fight this one out to the bitter end. If he loses the court case, well, after that, I don't know, maybe take a page from Gandhi...?
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