Leadoff witness key for GOP?

WENATCHEE — The King County elections employee who first admitted to producing a falsified ballot report will be the Republicans' leadoff witness today as they try to show the county bungled the vote count so badly that the governor's election should be overturned.

Nicole Way, the county's absentee-ballot supervisor, was subpoenaed to appear today. Republicans have high hopes for her testimony, saying she will begin to draw a link between the false report and higher-level elections officials, including elections Superintendent Bill Huennekens. She is on suspension from her job as the county investigates uncounted absentee ballots found long after the election.

Huennekens was on the stand for most of the day yesterday. With his terse answers, inability to recall some things and frequent objections from the Democratic attorney, Huennekens shed little light on the report and offered no new information.

He said he could not specifically remember what he knew about the falsified report before he gave it to the county canvassing board.

His deputy, Garth Fell, said in a sworn deposition that Huennekens knew the details beforehand.

"On the witness stand, he couldn't recall that information, which is surprising to me, and I think will be surprising to the court when the judge reads the deposition transcript from Garth Fell and hears Nicole Way testify," Republican attorney Rob Maguire said after court yesterday.

Huennekens wasn't asked directly about the most explosive of the charges Republicans leveled during opening arguments Monday — that someone illegally added ballots in some precincts and in others made them disappear.

"There's very little here except guessing," Democratic attorney Kevin Hamilton said. "The judge said clear and convincing evidence is necessary to prove this case, and that is exactly what this is not."

Huennekens was on the stand long enough for both sides to try to elevate him to symbolic stature.

To Republicans, he is a key cog in an election administration that is at the least grossly incompetent and possibly corrupt, that cared little about preventing felons from voting and covered up evidence of problems with the vote count.

Maguire asked Huennekens a series of questions about the erroneous mail-ballot report and the county's continuing problems of keeping track of absentee ballots.

"Does King County know the true number of absentee ballots returned in the Nov. 2 general election?" Maguire asked.

Huennekens: "We physically have them. I don't know that we have an exact number of absentee ballots returned."

Democrats saw Huennekens as a dedicated public servant who did the best he could under a tough situation that resulted only in the sort of mistakes inevitable in a system where 300,000 people vote in polling places, and twice that many by mail.

"Is it possible with 300,000 people showing up on one day, being managed by 3,000 poll workers, that everything would work perfectly without any paperwork errors at all?" Hamilton asked Huennekens.

Huennekens: "I don't think it's conceivable for it to be absolutely perfect."

Hamilton: "Democracy is sometimes messy?"

Huennekens: "Sure, yeah."

Hamilton: "But you do your best to conduct the administration of the election in a fair and impartial manner?"

Huennekens: "Yes, I believe we do."

The trial opened Monday in a lawsuit filed by Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi and other Republicans who allege that he, and not Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire, is the true winner of the election.

Rossi won the initial count in November by 261 votes. He then won a machine recount by 42 votes. But Gregoire won the third and final count when a hand tally of nearly 3 million votes gave her a margin of 129 votes.

The trial is set to last nine days.

Republicans won an important fight over evidence yesterday but today will face an even bigger test.

Yesterday, Bridges said Republicans could enter evidence that King County records show 875 more absentee ballots counted than voters recorded as having voted by mail.

Democrats wanted that excluded because they said it was not included in earlier filings when Republicans were required to list all their alleged illegal votes.

The evidence is key to the Republican claim that ballots were improperly added in some precincts and "disappeared" from others.

"It cannot be that the election contest statute prohibits litigating the classic ballot box stuffing scenario," Republicans said in a brief filed with Bridges.

Tentatively scheduled for this afternoon is a hearing on whether Republicans' expert witnesses can testify about felon voters.

Republicans want to apportion felon voters by the same percentage as the legal vote in any given precinct. They have two academic experts ready to testify that that is a sound, scientific basis for determining how illegal votes benefited each candidate.

Democrats, though, say the evidence is flawed and should not be allowed. In a brief filed late yesterday, Democrats say Republicans offered no proof that it's a reliable assumption that illegal votes would break down the same way as legal votes.

Democrats also say the list of felons the experts used for their analysis "is an incomplete and biased representation of the illegal votes cast in the 2004 election" because it focused on areas where Gregoire did well and ignored Rossi strongholds.

Before bringing Huennekens to the stand, Republicans questioned Chelan County Auditor Evelyn Arnold about how her county administers elections.

It was an effort to draw a comparison with the story Republicans knew Huennekens would tell.

"Have you ever had more votes cast than voters?" asked Republican party attorney Dale Foreman.

Arnold: "No."

Foreman: "If you had more votes cast than voters, would that be a problem?"

Arnold: "Yes, I would consider that a problem."

Democrats pointed out, though, the obvious differences in running an election here, with 29,000 votes cast by mail and at seven polling sites, and in King County, where about 900,000 votes were cast by mail and at 540 polling sites.

Democratic party attorney Jenny Durkan took Arnold through a series of questions to show that felons voted in Chelan County in November, despite Arnold's best efforts, and that "doesn't necessarily mean Chelan County did anything wrong."

David Postman: 360-943-9882 or dpostman@seattletimes.com