GOP, Democrats scrap over election lawsuit

Republicans and Democrats dueled with legal briefs and press statements Thursday as they continued the fight to throw out last year’s gubernatorial election or leave the winner in office.

At the heart of this flurry of paperwork could be a key to the GOP’s chance of getting Dino Rossi to replace Gov. Christine Gregoire in the governor’s mansion. That is, which votes cast in the Nov. 2 election shouldn’t be counted, and how they might be “uncounted” from a race that went through three tabulations and ended with Gregoire winning by 129 votes out of some 2.9 million cast.

“It’s time for Dino Rossi to acknowledge results of this election and drop the entire lawsuit,” state Democratic Chairman Paul Berendt said in a written statement issued after a news conference.

Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane issued a statement a half hour later that her boss wouldn’t be taking Berendt’s advice: “Dino Rossi will pursue the election contest in court because it’s the right thing to do.”

The parties’ attorneys, meanwhile, were making their arguments in motions filed with Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges, who has a major pretrial hearing in the election lawsuit on May 2. Bridges’ ruling there could determine what, if anything, is left for a trial starting May 23.

Republicans say some votes in the November election were cast by felons who lost their right to vote when convicted, and didn’t have it restored. By comparing records of felony convictions with records of voters, they say they’ve identified “nearly 1,000 votes” in the election that were cast by felons and they can find no record those voters had their rights restored.

They’ve done their job of establishing a “prima facie” case that illegal votes were cast, Harry Korrell said in the Republicans’ motion to clarify burden of proof. It’s up to the Democrats or elections officials in the individual counties to prove them wrong, Republicans argued.

Not so fast, argued Kevin Hamilton in the Democrats’ motions. Republicans started with more than 1,000 voters they said were illegal and had to trim that down to 879, after admitting the first group included people who had juvenile transgressions, which aren’t classified as felonies under state law.

Democrats say a check of the second group reveals other names of voters who either had their rights restored, weren’t convicted of a felony, didn’t vote last November or voted but said they didn’t vote in the governor’s race – all reasons not to count them as illegal voters.

Proving these voters are ineligible felons is “a time-consuming and laborious process,” Hamilton said. It should be the Republicans who have to prove that the people on their list should have their votes invalidated.

The Democrats are also challenging the Republicans’ contentions that some voters cast more than one ballot.

But even if Bridges does decide that some ballots were illegally cast, another battle looms over how to revise the candidates’ totals to account for those ballots, which can’t be separated from the other 2.9 million marked in the governor’s race.

Republicans have suggested the court reduce the totals proportionally. In other words, if 10 illegal votes were cast in a precinct that voted 60 percent for Gregoire and 40 percent for Rossi, the court should subtract six votes from her total and four votes from his. Some states have used that type of formula in election contests.

Democrats countered in their motions this week that other states have rejected such a process, and it doesn’t square with Washington law. Any mistakes are likely to be administrative errors, not provable fraud, Hamilton said, and state law only allows ballots to be subtracted for fraud.

If the Republicans can prove any illegal ballots were cast, Hamilton asked Bridges to order them on May 2 to prove at the trial which candidate each voter supported.