When the governor's-election lawsuit goes to trial next week in Wenatchee, Republicans will claim that someone stuffed ballot boxes or stole valid ballots.

They haven't shown specific evidence of either of those things. But at a news conference yesterday, state Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance said King County's inability to reconcile vote records is proof enough that last November's governor's election should be overturned.

"Nobody has confessed to vote fraud," Vance said, adding that he didn't expect that to happen.

But, he said, "If the books don't balance and you can't figure out why, you have to assume fraud took place."

The books he's talking about are the King County records that are supposed to reconcile ballots from the November election.

After nearly six months of work, King County election officials still can't say who cast 216 ballots at polling places on Nov. 2. There is also a discrepancy, Vance said, in the reconciliation of absentee ballots; county reports show 875 more ballots counted than voters recorded as having cast absentee ballots.

"It is impossible to rule out the possibility that votes were fraudulently added or subtracted from this election," Vance said.

Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt said yesterday that Republicans should offer specifics.

"They have used a very damaging word when they accuse someone of fraud," Berendt said. "They have a responsibility to disclose who committed fraud, when fraud was committed and what the fraud was, and they haven't done that on the eve of a very important trial."

Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, Vance and other Republicans filed a legal challenge to the election in January. They say that illegal votes by felons and others, election officials' errors and now fraud robbed Rossi of his rightful election.

The suit, filed in Chelan County Superior Court, asks Judge John Bridges to overturn the election and remove Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire from office.

Much of the attention in the case has focused on the allegation that felons voted illegally in the election. Both sides have produced lists of felons who they claim improperly boosted the vote total of the other candidate.

Since soon after the election, Republicans have said they were troubled by King County's inability to reconcile its voter lists. But yesterday was the first time Vance said those records will be used to allege that the vote count in King County was manipulated by fraud.

King County Elections Director Dean Logan has said he has found no evidence of fraud. Depositions from Logan and other county officials turned up no specific allegations.

Bobbie Egan, spokeswoman for the elections division, said yesterday that large counties like King are apt to have problems reconciling numbers of voters and ballots.

She points to Los Angeles County, where the election director has defended Logan and said that her county, too, is not able to perfectly balance voters and ballots.

Vance would not say how Rossi's attorneys planned to prove that fraud was responsible for the discrepancy in King County's ballot reconciliation.

"That will be the task for the lawyers," he said. "We believe this on its face is enough to annul the election. ... This will be a huge issue at trial."

Vance said he held the news conference yesterday to "remind" reporters that the Republican case is not just about felons.

Berendt said he thinks Vance is worried because Democrats have countered Republicans' claims of felon voters with their own list. Democrats say they have identified enough felons who they think voted for Rossi to offset those that Republicans allege voted for Gregoire.

"We have shot down the centerpiece of their case," Berendt said. "Here they are at the last minute resorting back to fraud, fraud, fraud, and trying to just throw these up against the wall to see if something sticks."

David Postman: 360-943-9882