May 23 trial set for Rossi lawsuit

WENATCHEE — A trial to determine whether the election of Gov. Christine Gregoire should be overturned will begin in Wenatchee on May 23, Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges said yesterday.

The trial, set to last two weeks, will come much sooner than Democrats had hoped. They had asked Bridges to wait at least six months so they could collect evidence to defend Gregoire's victory.

"Difficult is a rather dramatic understatement of the task before us," Democratic Party attorney Kevin Hamilton told Bridges.

But Bridges took a firmer hand in moving the trial forward.

"I know this is speeding everyone along," Bridges told the attorneys.

He said he moved in part because of a nudge from attorneys representing Secretary of State Sam Reed, who sided with Republicans in seeking a quick trial.

"I am attempting to be as sensitive as I can to everyone's desires as to when we have this trial," Bridges told the more than a dozen attorneys in his courtroom yesterday. "But there comes a point when the court has to say, 'This is when it's going to be,' and I think the point is today."

Dino Rossi, the Republican who ran against Gregoire, filed the legal challenge in January, saying a new election should be held because errors by election officials and illegal votes by felons and others polluted the vote count.

In the closest race in state history, Gregoire defeated Rossi by 129 votes after a hand recount overturned the results of two machine counts.

Bridges ruled in February that he wouldn't have the authority to call for a new election even if he did nullify the November election.

But in arguing for a quick trial, attorneys for Rossi and Reed proposed a schedule they said would allow time for a new gubernatorial election in November.

Republicans have said that even if Bridges can't call for a new vote, a vacancy would occur in the office if he were to overturn the election. In that event, the lieutenant governor would act as governor and a special election would be held.

From the beginning of the case, Bridges has acknowledged that whatever happens in his courtroom, an appeal to the state Supreme Court is inevitable.

Thomas Ahearne, special counsel to Reed, told Bridges that he checked the Supreme Court's calendar and was told there were openings for hearings June 28 and June 30 before the court's summer recess. He said that would accommodate an appeal and "allow for a November election if that is the relief this court grants."

"Fairness to the voters requires this election contest proceeding to be resolved" quickly, Ahearne said.

Democratic Party attorney Jenny Durkan reminded Bridges that he had ruled "very clearly" that he doesn't have the ability to set a new election.

Bridges also set a quick pace for hearing remaining pretrial motions.

Perhaps the most important of those will address alleged illegal votes — specifically, whether Republicans will have to show which candidate received each illegal vote.

Republicans want to use something called proportional deduction for illegal votes. Using that method, illegal votes would be divided between Gregoire and Rossi by the same percentage that they split the legitimate vote in a given precinct.

Rossi attorney Harry Korrell said Republicans will call expert witnesses to "provide statistical analysis of voting patterns that can support proportional analysis."

Democrats will oppose that, Durkan said. And if Bridges allows proportional deduction, she said, Democrats will argue that instead of splitting the vote according to geography, other personal information should be used.

She said that could include voters' gender, education level, what magazines they read, what car they drive and whether they had any dealings with Gregoire during her three terms as attorney general.

"I think the experts will say that will be more indicative of how someone voted," she told Bridges.

As Republicans gather evidence of illegal votes that benefited Gregoire, they may try to stop Democrats from doing the same with improper votes that benefited Rossi, Korrell said.

"I'm not convinced, your honor, that they can go around the state and look for different kinds of errors," he said. "That would grind this proceeding to a halt."

He said Democrats were trying to "expand this case and we think, as a result, slow it down."

Durkan said state law calls for illegal votes to be subtracted from both candidates in an election contest. She said she fears Republicans looked for felons and other illegal voters only in precincts that favored Gregoire. "We are not trying to drag this out at all," she said. "We'd like it to be done, but we want it to be done fairly."

David Postman: 360-943-9882