Citizens challenge election outcome

OLYMPIA – The opening salvo in a legal challenge to the Washington governor’s election has been fired not by the state Republican Party, but by two citizens apparently acting on their own.

A Fall City construction manager and a man from Shoreline have filed separate election challenges in the state Supreme Court.

“We had nothing to do with that. These are two random citizens,” said state GOP chairman Chris Vance.

The party is preparing for a high-noon showdown in the state Legislature on Tuesday, and perhaps a court fight after that. Democrats have a strong majority in the House and a two-vote majority in the Senate, but it looks like at least one Democrat is willing to side with Republicans. Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, on Thursday night sent a letter urging fellow lawmakers to delay certifying the election until errors can be researched more.

The state Democratic Party had no immediate comment on the Supreme Court challenges, although a party lawyer said that one suggested fix – a revote – is not allowed under state law or the state Constitution.

“Republicans, disappointed their candidate lost the race for governor, are waging a misleading public relations effort calling for a multimillion-dollar election do-over,” wrote Democratic lawyer Jenny A. Durkan in a memo to reporters.

For weeks, state officials have noted that any registered voter could appeal the election, which Gov.-Elect Christine Gregoire won by 129 votes after losing the first two of three counts.

So a week ago, 38-year-old Daniel P. Stevens decided to take those officials at their word. He called the secretary of state’s office, did some legal research on the Internet, paid the $250 fee and filed his one-page appeal with the state’s highest court.

“I assumed that I was part of a long list of thousands of people doing it,” he said in a phone interview Thursday. He was surprised to learn that he’s one of just two challengers.

Stevens said he was moved to act because with the margin of victory so thin – some fifteen ten-thousands of a percent – he doesn’t think anyone can say for sure who really won.

“The system the state has in place is inadequate for an election this close,” he said. The best fix, he said, would be to correct any system flaws and then quickly have a revote in the race, in hopes of emerging with a more definitive victory.

The other challenge was filed by an Arthur Coday Jr., from the Puget Sound city of Shoreline. Efforts to reach Coday for comment Thursday were unsuccessful, but his 13-page challenge details his arguments.

Coday maintains that Washington has violated its own Constitution in this race, by allowing Democrats to pay $730,000 for the third and final tally. Section 19 of the state Constitution, Coday noted, starts with the words “All elections shall be free and equal…”

But $730,000 isn’t “free,” he writes, and allowing Democrats to pay for a recount was an illegal selling of a state “favor.” He compares it to a bribe.

Secretary of State Sam Reed and other election officials have said that Gregoire did exactly what state law allows in such a case. Coday maintains that the law is unconstitutional.

Coday also challenges the election outcome on the grounds that ballots were judged differently from one tally to the next, that the counting methods were flawed and that the ballots were improperly “enhanced” by election workers when faint markings couldn’t be read by counting machines.

Coday isn’t calling for a revote. He wants Rossi inaugurated as the real winner in the race.

As Gregoire has in recent days gone about the businesss of preparing to be governor, the state GOP has been furiously going over voter records, trying to find evidence of fraud, errors or other major problems.

“There’s a massive cloud over this election and the Legislature can’t ignore that,” said Vance. Republican-leaning Web logs like soundpolitics.org and radio talk shows in Puget Sound have reported cases of dead people or felons voting. Vance has said he expects the party to soon be able to detail such cases, although he said he couldn’t comment on any yet Thursday. He did say that in King County “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, perhaps a thousand” provisional ballots were wrongly fed into the county’s Accu-vote counting machines without going through proper confirmation procedures. Those votes, Vance says, are illegal.

Reed – a Republican – said Thursday that the election wasn’t the mess that his own party is trying to portray it as.

“Overall, the election process worked very well,” Reed said. “We didn’t have the situation they had in Florida where it became almost chaotic and they were making up the rules as they went along.”

Yes, Washington had some mistakes in this election, he said.

“The rumors are far, far worse than the reality,” he said. “…Nothing has been brought to my attention that would constitute fraud.”

Reed said he doesn’t think the GOP will be able to produce a “big smoking gun” as evidence for a revote. Instead, the party’s evidence is likely to be a list of smaller errors.

“But when you (have a) fifteen ten-thousandths of a percent difference, the little mistakes can make a difference,” he said.

As for Daniel Stevens’ day in court, he said he was a little surprised that his challenge was accepted.

“I really didn’t expect much to happen, but this was kind of my last desperate attempt to do something,” he said. If the case makes it to oral arguments, he said, he plans to get some advice from law students before going in front of the nine justices.

“I’d just perform an argument and do the best I can,” he said.