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January 07, 2005

Rossi Contests Washington Election; Gorton Backing

Republican Dino Rossi is contesting...

Republican Dino Rossi filed a sweeping lawsuit today challenging Democrat Christine Gregoire's election as governor.
"It is clear this election is a mess," Rossi said this afternoon as he announced the lawsuit in Bellevue.

Rossi and the state Republican Party say a series of problems in King County, as well as evidence that votes were cast under the names of dead people and felons means a judge should throw out the Nov. 2 election and call for a new one.

"The counties have counted a huge number of invalid and illegal votes," said attorney Harry Korrell.

The suit was filed in Chelan County Superior Court.

Korrell said there is no doubt the case will end up at the state Supreme Court. But he said hearings before a judge are necessary to establish what happened in the election and he did not want to do that in the larger counties where most of the problems have been discovered.

"The election contest is not about trying to prove that anybody is out to steal the election," Rossi said. He does not claim a conspiracy.

But he said there are so many problems through the three counts of the nearly 3 million ballots cast that a new election is the only way to "help cleanse this process."

Asked how she felt about the GOP challenge, Gregoire said "I don't take any of this personally. I respect the rights of others to file an action in court. That's their right. I have to respect that, I'm the attorney general."

Gregoire reiterated that she's seen no proof of election fraud.

"Whatever has been said over the last few days, and every day it's a new issue that's been raised, I have yet to see any proof of any illegality on behalf of the election officials," she said. "They have acted in a consummate professional way."

Problems that have been uncovered in the election, she said "are in fact honest, potential mistakes. They are not fraudulent. They are not illegal."

Former U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, a key Rossi advisor, said it is not necessary to show fraud, only enough errors that puts the true outcome of the race in doubt.

"The number of votes cast questionably, illegally or mistakenly is vastly in excess of the 129 vote margin by which this election has been certified.," Gorton said.

Gorton said this week he was initially skeptical that a lawsuit could succeed. Votes by dead people and felons likely wouldn't have been enough to unseat Gregoire, he advised Rossi's team.

"Earlier this week when it looked like that was all there was, I said, 'Fine, go ahead, but you don't have an awful lot,'. " Gorton said.

He was much more optimistic after the discovery this week that an unknown number, perhaps hundreds, of provisional ballots were improperly fed into voting machines on Election Day.

Good for Rossi. Fight it, fight it well and get a revote. This is now well worth the effort with this week's discoveries of questionable ballots, dead voters, etc.

UPDATE: Sound Politics with coverage of Rossi's press conference. Slade Gorton calls the election "invalid." The money quote from Rossi:

"We've found that some people have remained politically active even after they died."

Indeed!

The basis of Rossi's challenge seems to be the Revised Code of Washingon section 29A.68.110, which concerns "Illegal votes -- Number of votes affected -- Enough to change result" and states the following:

No election may be set aside on account of illegal votes, unless it appears that an amount of illegal votes has been given to the person whose right is being contested, that, if taken from that person, would reduce the number of the person's legal votes below the number of votes given to some other person for the same office, after deducting therefrom the illegal votes that may be shown to have been given to the other person.

If Christine Gregoire continues to argue that there is no basis for throwing out the election and proceeding with a revote then she will remind all of us that she is indeed the woman who cost Washington state $18 million by failing to meet a simple court appeal deadline, and then shifting the blame for that fiasco to one of her subordinates.

Posted at 04:53 PM Pacific