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Bellevue, WA – An internal e-mail adds to the evidence that the King County elections department knew about No Signature On File (NSOF) ballots well before it claimed to have discovered its “mistake.” King County rejected more than 700 ballots because it didn’t have signatures on file to match the signatures on the ballots. On Nov. 3, 2004, an e-mail sent to King County Elections Superintendent Bill Huennekens included a list of NSOF voters. A copy of the e-mail is attached. But in December, when news of the NSOF ballots became public, King County Elections Director Dean Logan, Huennekens’ boss,...

Former candidate for governor Dino Rossi is expected to hold a press conference at 4 p.m. today. Tune in to NorthWest Cable News for live coverage or come back here for live video streaming.

Reality check on election contest rulings Gregoire & Dems lose most motions; New election still possible Bellevue, WA – Yesterday in Chelan County Superior Court, the Dino Rossi campaign won an overwhelming victory in Rossi’s election contest case. The judge rejected the Democratic Party’s efforts to throw the case out, allowing a trial to move forward, and although he specifically denied the Rossi campaign’s request for a revote, he left the path clear for nullifying the 2004 gubernatorial election. If the election is nullified, there will be a vacancy in the governor’s office and a new election must be held....

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Whoever wins the legal challenge to the governor's election, the citizens of Washington will pay. In fact, they're already paying. The state expects to spend about $200,000 of taxpayer money on private lawyers defending the Secretary of State's office. And every county auditor and prosecutor is spending thousands of taxpayer dollars in staff time to respond to the Republicans' lawsuit challenging the 129-vote victory of Gov. Christine Gregoire. Some say the lawsuit is bleeding resources from other areas of government. Republicans, convinced the election was irredeemably tainted, say the challenge is worth the cost. "We don't...

Feds threatened suit over military ballotsBy David Postman and Ralph ThomasSeattle Times staff reporters   OLYMPIA — Less than a month before the November election, the U.S. Department of Justice threatened to sue Washington state because it was moving too slowly in mailing military ballots overseas. At that point Washington was the only state that hadn't mailed its overseas ballots. Questions about military ballots have come up frequently since the Nov. 2 election ended with a deadlocked governor's race. Democrat Christine Gregoire was certified governor-elect Dec. 30 and is to be sworn in Wednesday. But Republican Dino Rossi has...

Republican emotions were inflamed by party chairman Chris Vance, who blamed King County elections officials, democrats, and even those 700 plus voters for this situation. Once again, he demanded their votes not be counted, and left the door open for calling for a whole new election if they are. "If there's another outcome or another decision and questionable or illegal ballots are brought into the process, we reserve all of our options," he said. . . . Democrat candidate Chris Gregoire said voter trust will be eroded more by disqualifying legitimate ballots than correcting mistakes by elections officials and counting...

Ballot checks vary widely across state By Christine Willmsen and Susan Kelleher Seattle Times staff reporters It never mattered much — until this election. But the fact that one county in Washington verifies ballot signatures differently than another county has taken on more significance as the gubernatorial election hangs on a handful of votes. A Seattle Times survey of counties shows that procedures for evaluating signatures are highly subjective and vary widely from county to county. More than 3,400 ballots in Washington were rejected in the November election because the signatures didn't match those on file with elections officials. And...

Republicans in Washington state suspect Democrats, with 500 patronage jobs at risk, are cheating in what is now the unprecedented third counting of the 2,883,341 ballots cast in the Nov. 2 election for governor.     In the current hand recount, Democrats keep discovering untabulated ballots. The state's Republicans, who thought they had elected Dino Rossi as the first Republican governor in 20 years, are furious.     State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance says he can't decide whether Democrat officials in heavily Democratic King County — where uncounted or improperly discarded ballots keep popping up — are "colossally incompetent or completely corrupt."...

Will Legislature pick governor? It could happen By David Postman Seattle Times chief political reporter OLYMPIA — The state Supreme Court's unanimous rejection of the Democratic Party's recount lawsuit yesterday settled — for the moment, at least — the legal issues in the contentious governor's election. But it also raised the prospect of the fight moving back into the political arena, with questions about whether the eventual loser will use a vaguely worded provision in the state constitution to try to force the Legislature to overturn the result. That, according to one attorney, "is the ultimate nuclear weapon in the...

Wednesday, December 15, 2004 Count votes that count SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD The Washington Supreme Court Tuesday reached a unanimous and sound decision in rejecting the Democratic Party's request to effectively alter state election law by judicial fiat. It is, of course, impossible to know which gubernatorial candidate would have profited had the court ordered all 39 counties to include in the hand recount ballots that had been previously rejected. Democrats presumably believed the change would have benefited their candidate, Christine Gregoire. But it doesn't matter who would have benefited (this newspaper endorsed Democrat Gregoire). The justices' reading of the...

"It's tough being Republican in this state," Rossi joked with the crowd of 75 - mostly Republicans - who filled the reception hall at Hawthorne Funeral Home and Memorial Park. "You have to win three times." ... "Achievement and accountability have to be the cornerstones of the K-12 education system," Rossi told the crowd, who applauded loudly. "We cannot achieve great things by lowering our standards." ... He also said he approves of performance audits, which aim to reduce government waste and improve efficiency. "The first question always should be, ‘Should government be doing this function in the first place,'"...

Keep Legislature out of the governor’s race THE NEWS TRIBUNE Last updated: December 11th, 2004 02:40 AM (PST) The latest plan by some state Democrats to capture the governorship is downright embarrassing – and that’s putting it mildly. In a letter to Secretary of State Sam Reed, Democratic Party lawyer David Burman claimed that under the state constitution, the race between Republican Dino Rossi and Democrat Christine Gregoire could be decided by a vote in the state Legislature, where Democrats control both houses. That’s because an obscure constitutional provision grants power to lawmakers to decide the outcome of a “contested...

Saturday, December 11, 2004 · Last updated 9:34 a.m. PT Man or machine? Rossi-Gregoire recount prompts dispute over accuracy By DAVID AMMONS AP POLITICAL WRITER OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Humans versus machines? No, it's not an old Schwarzenegger sci-fi flick, but a high-stakes dispute in the often strange world of Washington politics. With the governor's race hanging in the balance, an unprecedented third vote count is now underway in the state's 39 counties - by real live human beings this time. The two previous tallies, both by machine, showed underdog Republican Dino Rossi to be the winner by the tiniest margin...

Even if Republican Dino Rossi wins the hand recount of the state’s extraordinary governor’s race, a never-before-used provision in the state constitution could allow the Democrat-controlled Legislature to hand the election to Democrat Christine Gregoire. Experts are unsure how to interpret the provision. But the state Democratic Party says it gives Democrats the ability to contest the results of the election before the Legislature. The Legislature would hold a trial of sorts, like an impeachment hearing, with lawmakers voting on the final outcome, according to a Democratic Party lawyer. That scenario would seem to favor Gregoire, because Democrats will hold...

Gregoire ‘Jumps the Shark’ * Now claims she has nothing to do with lawsuit Bellevue, WA – Christine Gregoire had nothing to do with an Attorney General opinion opposing the inclusion of previously rejected ballots into a hand recount. Nor does she have anything to do with a lawsuit filed by the Democratic Party regarding the hand recount in the governor’s race. At least, that’s what Christine Gregoire says. This week Gregoire, who has been Attorney General for 12 years, claimed she had no knowledge of long-standing Attorney General advice that in a manual recount, rejected ballots cannot be introduced...

Okay, below is latest the Rossi campaign press release: Gregoire & the memo: Attorney General claims ignorance Bellevue, WA – Christine Gregoire is trying to shrug off responsibility for a 1996 memo that puts her own Attorney General’s office at odds with her efforts now to change the rules of the recount in the governor’s race. Yesterday, a November 1996 memo from then-Secretary of State Ralph Munro regarding a manual recount in a state legislative race was made public. It included the following statement: “Challenge of Ballots Not Allowed. We are advised by the Attorney General that state law makes...

Okay, here are some interesting excerpts: -------------- Republicans yesterday cited support for their position from the Attorney General's Office. They pointed to a 1996 memo from then-Secretary of State Ralph Munro saying the Attorney General's Office had advised that a recount should not include previously rejected ballots. The memo appears to put Gregoire in the awkward position of heading an office that is on record against the position of Democratic Party lawyers trying to help her win the election. However, Jim Pharris, a senior assistant attorney general, said the office hasn't "expressed a view" on the issue since 1990, before...