Numbers speak for themselves, GOP says
By David Postman
Times chief political Reporter;
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002289056_trial26m.html
WENATCHEE — At the close of day three in the governor's election trial yesterday, the essence of the Republican case alleging ballot stuffing and stealing was projected on a large screen: eight columns and 12 rows of figures on half of a folded piece of paper.
Attorneys didn't finger any suspects or lay out a plot. And the numbers were shown only after a skeptical Judge John Bridges said the Republican witness who had them was walking a thin line between sticking to the stats and giving his opinion about what they meant.
"The saying is 'trying to lick honey from the edge of a razor blade,' I think," Bridges had cautioned.
The figures on the screen showed discrepancies in absentee-ballot counts from 11 King County precincts. In some of the precincts, the county recorded more absentee ballots counted than there were voters recorded as having voted absentee. In others, the opposite occurred: The county recorded more voters as having voted than it did ballots counted.
The key, Republicans said, was to look closely at the precincts where the greatest discrepancies occurred. Precincts with the largest numbers of excess ballots were some of Gregoire's strongest precincts, judging by the share of the vote she got. Precincts with the largest number of excess voters — where there wasn't a ballot counted for every voter logged as voting — were Rossi strongholds.
That, Republican attorney Mark Braden said later, is all that's needed to show someone illegally added ballots in Gregoire precincts and took them from Rossi precincts. He says Republicans don't need to show who did it or how it was done.
"Do I have a theory? No," he said. "I don't know how it happened. I do not know why we have a nonrandom pattern."
Democratic Party attorney David Burman tried to stop the figures from being introduced as evidence in Chelan County Superior Court. He said the Republican witness, D.C.-based Republican consultant Clark Bensen, was being improperly used as an expert witness.
He said showing just 11 precincts, and including the percent of Rossi's vote in those precincts, is the sort of thing "statistical science has spent many, many years analyzing because of the tendency of lay people to jump to conclusions that are in fact not valid."
The judge overruled Burman's repeated objections, saying he was waiting to see how the evidence fit into the Republicans' larger case.
"I understand the objection and it may be valid but I can't drive petitioners' case here," Bridges said. "If they can tie it up, I guess that's their business at this point."
He said Bensen could testify about the numbers and added, "whether that has any meaning in the ozone is something that will remain to be seen."
Rossi and Republicans filed what is formally known as an election contest petition in January. Rossi had won the initial vote count and a machine recount. Gregoire won a hand recount, was declared the winner, and took office in January.
The third day of what is scheduled to be a nine-day trial was marked by several bits of commentary by Bridges along the lines of razor blades and the ozone. He pushed attorneys to keep to a schedule and at times seemed to be feeling the burden of the case.
When Democratic attorney Jenny Durkan said a document should not be entered as evidence because a witness could not say for sure it was accurate, Bridges said if he applied a 100 percent accuracy test to everything in the election contest, "there'd be no evidence in this case."
Calling for a brief recess, Bridges told a witness she could step down but joked she should not run off.
"Even though I may want to run off with you," he said.
At midday he told the attorneys he was "worried about you folks" and asked if they were getting any sleep. And he chose to end the day a bit early by saying, "I'm pretty tired right now."
Most of the day was taken up with the testimony of Nicole Way, King County's mail-ballot supervisor.
Her appearance here has been anticipated for two weeks — ever since she gave a deposition saying she and her boss had submitted a flawed ballot summary report.
Much of her time on the stand was taken up with questions about the report and what she and her boss, assistant elections superintendent Garth Fell, did before and after deciding what numbers to plug into the report.
The problem was they didn't know for sure how many absentee ballots had been returned to the county by voters.
When they had to come up with that number, they added the number of ballots counted and the number rejected, and said that was how many had been returned, meaning the report balanced perfectly.
But in late March and early April, county workers found 95 uncounted absentee ballots still in their envelopes, showing the report was wrong.
There were a lot of questions about whether Way knew the number was false when she and Fell issued the report.
Bridges asked her a series of questions in his most direct involvement with a witness yet.
"I'm sorry to beat this to death, but I want to make sure I have it straight in my mind what this is all about," he told Way.
Way told Bridges that she didn't know the report was wrong until the uncounted ballots were found in the spring.
But Republican Party attorney Harry Korrell read from Way's deposition, where she talked about consulting with Fell.
"We discussed how to fill out this report because we didn't have an accurate number of ballots returned," Way said in the deposition.
Way's last question on the stand came from Durkan, who asked if she wanted to explain the apparent discrepancy.
Way, her voice cracking after hours on the witness stand, said: "It was as accurate as it could be. I was concerned it was wrong, but I didn't know there were ballots unaccounted for in this report until the 95 were found."
Braden, the Republican attorney, said Way's testimony was important because the unreliable mail-ballot system and the fudged report opened the door to wrongdoing.
"Certainly what she did made it possible for people to commit fraud," Braden said on the courthouse steps. "I cannot point to anybody who committed fraud. We're just saying clearly the opportunity was there and it looks suspicious."
Bridges ruled on Monday that there is no official fraud claim in the legal challenge.
And J. Vander Stoep, an attorney and close adviser to Rossi, said as soon as Braden finished his interview, "We don't have to prove fraud to win this case."
He said even if the judge accepts that the errors in King County really are random, it would show enough mistakes and neglect by election officials to overturn the election.
Democrats, though, said what's on the record so far doesn't amount to enough to have affected the outcome of the election.
"They just don't have any evidence of anything," said Democratic attorney Kevin Hamilton. "Saying there were accounting lapses that could have allowed something to happen is not clear and convincing evidence that anything happened."
David Postman: 360-943-9882 or
dpostman@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
My favorite line from above is "Democratic attorney Kevin Hamilton used much of the Democrats' opening argument to urge Bridges to disallow the fraud charges."
I *think* he ment to write "Democrat attorney....." LOL