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January 25, 2005

Wrangling the legal doggies

Today's Seattle Post Intelligencer lays out what I think is the main legal hurdle for the Rossi camp:

The heart of the Republicans' challenge so far is their contention that election workers in several counties fed 437 provisional ballots directly into vote-tabulating machines on election day without determining whether the voters were registered.

Provisional ballots are given to voters whose names don't show up on the registration rolls -- often because they recently moved from another precinct and sometimes because they're not registered voters. Election workers are supposed to set those ballots aside and verify them before adding them to the count. Provisional ballots look exactly like regular ballots, so once they're counted there's no way to go back and separate them out again.

Republicans say this allegation alone should be enough to nullify the election.

"That's more than three times the difference between the two candidates," GOP attorney Robert Maguire told Bridges at last Thursday's preliminary court hearing.

Democrats responded that even if 437 unverified provisional ballots were counted, that's not enough to nullify the election results.

"We know who won this election. It has been certified. There is a governor," said Jenny Durkan, attorney for the state Democratic Party.

Both sides point to a 72-word provision in state law addressing illegal votes. It says that an election may be nullified only if the number of illegal votes counted was enough to change the winner.

Republicans will argue that the 437 provisional ballots could change the results -- and even though there's no way to go back and find out who the votes were for, that's enough "illegal votes" to meet the constitutional requirement.

But Democrats say their foes must prove the illegal votes would actually change the results. If Republicans want a new election, Democrats say, they must prove that Rossi would be the winner if the illegal votes were taken out of the total. And in court last week Democratic attorneys indicated they're ready, if necessary, to scour the state looking for illegal Rossi votes to offset any illegal Gregoire votes.

Further, it's my understanding that the illegal votes rule won't be met unless illegal votes for both sides are presented. The list of felons who apparently voted will have to be scoured and sworn affadavits will have to be taken with folks swearing as to whom they voted for.

The backlash against Rossi on this has to be bubbling under the surface. Taxpayer dollars are being burned on an unwinnable case for what appears to be nothing more than base political purposes.

It's looking more and more like Rossi and the Washington GOP are doing nothing more than stomping on sour grapes.

Posted by Carla at January 25, 2005 10:50 AM