Even though liberal Seattle is celebrating the dismissal of Dino Rossi's election-contest lawsuit, it shouldn't be seen as a victory for Christine Gregoire, or for that matter, the voters of the state. The expensive failure to set aside this tainted election will only be a disincentive to maintain the integrity of elections in the future.
After a 129-vote lead on the third count, Gregoire cockily declared that the election had been "a model to the rest of the nation and the world at large." By the end of the trial, her lawyers showed Judge Bridges enough offsetting errors and illegal votes that they only affirmed the central claim from Rossi's contest petition: that "the number of illegal votes counted, and the number of valid votes improperly rejected in this election, are so great as to render the true result of the election uncertain and likely unknowable."
That's a fair interpretation of the judge's finding that 1,678 illegal votes were counted while 168 valid votes were never counted. There were another 1,415 questionable ballots unmatched to voters. Gregoire kept the governor's chair only because she was in it at the outset and favored by the rules. Although Rossi's lawyers failed to persuade the judge that ultimately Rossi received more votes than Gregoire, Gregoire didn't show that she actually received more votes than Rossi. The judge had to rely on an archaic case-law presumption that the ballots had been tabulated "honestly and correctly," even while his ruling chastised King County Elections workers for "significant errors" and "taking our paycheck but not doing the work."
Secretary of State Sam Reed took a neutral position in the contest and advocated that the judge craft a "workable and rational interpretation" of the contest statute. After the ruling he expressed his concern to me that the bar might have been set too high. He would like to rewrite the statute with a more reasonable standard for nullification, such as if the number of illegal votes is a multiple of the margin of victory.
In the meantime, Judge Bridges fears that his own ruling, which was powerless to correct for illegal votes, could invite monkey business. As he warned in his introductory remarks: "Extraordinary efforts are in place to make it easier to vote but, unfortunately, I fear that it will be much more difficult to account for those votes in the future."
Stefan Sharkansky founded the local conservative politics blog www.soundpolitics.com.
