[Vision2020] It's Finally Over

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (June 7, 2005) Spokesman Review.

Washingtonians may now return to their daily lives.

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Rossi puts an end to governor's race

By Richard Roesler
Staff writer

June 6, 2005

WENATCHEE - Six months after losing the election for governor by just 129
votes, Republican Dino Rossi threw in the towel today, saying it would be
politically unrealistic to believe he could prevail in an appeal of today's
legal ruling against his pursuit of a new election.

"Because of the political makeup of the Washington Supreme Court, which
makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending this
election contest," Rossi said in televised comments from his campaign
headquarters in Bellevue.

Rossi's decision came just hours after a resounding defeat in a Wenatchee
courtroom.

Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges ruled that although there
were more than 1,400 illegal votes in November's gubernatorial election,
Republicans had failed to show how any of those people voted. 

Without proof that the errors illegally robbed Republicans of victory, the
judge said today, his hands were tied by the state's election laws.

"Irregularity.is not sufficient to invalidate an election," said Bridges. He
criticized the mistakes, but upheld Gov. Christine Gregoire's narrow win and
even improved it slightly. He raised the margin to 133 votes based on the
testimony of four felons who said they'd illegally voted for Rossi.

"Unless an election is clearly invalid, when the people have spoken, their
verdict should not be disturbed by the courts," the judge said.

Republicans had talked of appealing the case to the Supreme Court before the
court's long summer recess. But Rossi said today that it was time to call
off the contest even though he believes the conflict served to illustrate
serious flaws in the state's election system.

State Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt called the Wenatchee trial "a
slam-dunk.

"I couldn't believe how poorly they (Republicans) put their case together,"
Berendt said. "I don't see where that ruling gave them an inch to try and
appeal."

Berendt said that the Democrats have spent $3.5 million on the research and
legal fight since Election Day.

Both sides looked uneasy before the ruling. 

At the Republican table, GOP attorney Robert Maguire could be heard saying
to fellow Republican lawyer Harry Korrell "Look confident, Harry." But as
the judge read, Republican attorneys slumped.

The Democrat attorneys - who had already chilled their champagne at a local
lawyer's office - were jubilant. When the judge left, they gave each other
high-fives and gleefully posed for photos with a four-foot-tall mockup of
Gregoire's election certificate.

Republicans in the audience were dismayed.

"Truly, no one really knows who won this election," said former House
Speaker Clyde Ballard, an East Wenatchee native.

Thoughout the nine-day trial, Republicans maintained that the illegal votes
and mistakes verged on "fraud" and "ballot-stuffing."

It would be preposterous, they said to put 1,400 felons on the stand and ask
each how they voted.

"It's completely untrustworthy," Korrell said. "We're talking about felons.
How could you believe it?"

Plus, he said, Republicans didn't want to violate the secrecy of the ballot
by trying to make people say how they voted.

Instead, they based their case on a controversial theory called proportional
deduction. It assumes that the felons voted the same way their neighbors
did. If a felon came from a strong Gregoire precinct, Republicans argued,
the odds are good that that felon voted for Gregoire.

But Democratic expert witnesses - and the judge - said that Republicans
couldn't simply assume that felons voted like their neighbors. For one
thing, most felons are men, and Rossi did better among men than among women.

In fact, Democrats questioned five of the felons. Four said they voted for
Rossi; one said he voted for Libertarian Ruth Bennett. Judge Bridges
deducted those votes from Rossi and Bennett on Monday.

In his ruling, the judge noted that Republicans had asked him to use his
powers to send a message to election officials.

"I'm going to decline that invitation," Bridges said. "This court is not in
a position to fix the deficiencies in the election process that we heard
about in this courtroom in the past nine days."

There clearly are problems, the judge said. But "it's the voters who should
send the message," he said.

He also blasted what King County elections official Dean Logan described as
the "culture" he found when he took over two years ago.

"Almost anyone who works in state or local government knows exactly what
this culture is," the judge said. "It's inertia. It's selfishness. It's
taking our paycheck but not doing the work.It's not taking responsibility.
It's about refusing to be held accountable."

The judge also criticized Republicans, saying that despite their allegations
of fraud and ballot-stuffing, they'd been unable to prove any.

"There is no evidence that the ballots were changed, the ballot box stuffed,
or that lawful votes were removed from either candidate's ballot box," he
said.

Dean Logan, the man who oversees King County elections said today that the
agency "can and will do better."

"We will take the next three months to carefully examine and address
decades-old elections problems which have plagued this organization," Logan
said in a written statement. "Rest assured, we have learned from our
mistakes."

Outside the courtroom, former House Speaker Ballard was profoundly
skeptical.

"They're not going to change," Ballard said. The judge's criticism, he said,
"will be like rain hitting the back of a duck. They're impervious."

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Take care, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho


"What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they
are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say
about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."

-- Robert F. Kennedy