WENATCHEE — Nearly every day in the trial over the governor's election, Judge John Bridges overruled Democrats' objections while letting Republicans enter reams of new evidence and put all their expert witnesses on the stand. By week's end, about the only things Democrats were able to keep out were two Post-It Notes labeled "these are forgeries" and a statistician's "scattergram," an inkblot-looking chart.

It's been a wide-open evidence policy that even Bridges acknowledged is pushing the bounds.

"I can imagine how frustrated counsel has been with the court because you don't know me, and you come to this court and I start making rulings which I'm sure some of you think are just not supported by any rules of evidence you've ever read," Bridges said from the bench last week.

But, as he said when he allowed Republicans' expert testimony but reserved an official decision until later, "I think it is the only practical way that we can proceed."

Bridges' rulings so far tell a lot about how he views his role in the state's first trial over a contested governor's race: He wants to err on the side of allowing evidence and testimony because he knows the case will be appealed to the Washington state Supreme Court. He sees himself as the fact-finder in the case — but not the ultimate decision maker.

"The judge just wants to make sure everything gets in so there's a full record," said Richard Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School and the operator of a Web log focusing on election law.

"Regardless of what he's going to ultimately rule, from the standpoint of administrative efficiency this makes a lot of sense."

The veteran Chelan County Superior Court judge is guided by the recognition that whatever he does will likely set a critical legal precedent. The few state Supreme Court cases on the subject stemmed from local races and, Bridges has said, can be contradictory on some points. A ruling on a statewide election could reshape this state's election law.

Rulings favored GOP

The lawsuit was filed by Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, state Republican chairman Chris Vance and other party members in January after a hand recount made Democrat Christine Gregoire governor.

Rossi won the original count of the Nov. 2 election and a machine recount before a hand count gave Gregoire a 129-vote victory margin.

Republicans say that errors and illegal votes by felons and others — as well as fraud in King County's election division — stole the election from Rossi. The trial began May 23 and is scheduled to end Friday.

There's no question that Bridges' rulings through the first five days of trial have almost exclusively benefited Republicans. But that may not be good news for Republicans.

There's a belief among attorneys that a judge who thinks one side is likely to win will rule in favor of the other on evidentiary and procedural motions. That's to reduce the likelihood that the case will be reversed due to a technical error, said University of Washington Law School professor Robert Aronson.

"But decisions like that have been known to backfire," he said. The trial judge could be swayed if enough unfavorable evidence gets in, including some that should have been excluded.

Aronson said that's more likely to happen with a jury trial. A judge in a bench trial — as this one is — need not worry as much about what evidence is admitted because he is a legal expert and can analyze it better than a jury of laypeople.

Allowed into evidence

On Friday, Republicans rested their case and Bridges rejected a Democratic motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Among the evidence he admitted last week:

• On Thursday he allowed Republicans to use two political-science professors to make the case that votes cast illegally by felons and others in any given precinct should be apportioned among Gregoire and Rossi by the same percentage as the overall vote in that precinct. Republicans have said there's no way to find out for certain which candidate the felons voted for — making it impossible to weed out their illegal votes. So they say that using statistical analysis is the best way to estimate how they voted. Democrats said it was unreliable and untested social science. After a special hearing on whether the evidence meets state standards for expert testimony, Bridges said he'd allow it but reserved his official decision until later.

• On Wednesday he allowed the Republicans' data consultant to testify about ballot-accounting discrepancies in King County. Bridges did so over Democratic objections that the consultant wasn't included in the GOP's pre-trial list of expert witnesses. They said Republicans were trying to sneak in an expert witness whose testimony should be disallowed.

Bridges conceded that the witness, Clark Bensen, was "walking a very fine line between a lay witness and an expert witness. The saying is 'trying to lick honey from the edge of a razor blade,' I think."

• On Tuesday he overruled Democratic objections and allowed Republicans to introduce evidence of 875 absentee ballots that King County election officials can't reconcile with a list of people who voted by mail. Democrats argued that Republicans hadn't raised specific concerns about those ballots when they filed their case.

For Republicans, had the series of rulings gone the other way, it could have seriously hampered their case.

"It's just been hurdle after hurdle," Republican attorney Rob Maguire said after court Friday. He said Republicans have come a long way since January, when some experts "said we'd never make it to a trial."

"But here we are, a week away" from a decision, he said.

Whether or not Bridges' evidentiary rulings are good news for Republicans, almost all came with a caveat or qualification from the judge.

"He's clearly skeptical," said Democratic attorney David Burman.

Bridges hasn't done much that would hint at what he thinks of Republicans' central claim — that Rossi, not Gregoire, won the race — but he told them last week that he disagrees on at least a rhetorical theme in their case.

Looking to the future

Democrats have cautioned that if Bridges accepts a Republican argument that sets a low hurdle for overturning an election, it will invite many more election cases in the future.

But Republican attorney Mark Braden responded by telling Bridges that this is the closest governor's race in the nation's history and that "having a successful contest action once every 200 years is not going to overburden the judiciary."

Said Bridges: "You need to understand that my focus here is based on the recognition that this is going to happen again — an election like this — because I think a court's ruling needs to be consistent not only with the present but the future."

Aronson said judges always think about the precedent they may be setting.

"There's no reason to believe in this instance that we will not see more close elections in the future," Aronson said.

Hasen, the Loyola Law School professor, agreed.

"I think it's likely there will be important clarifications of law in this case," he said. That could include the question of whether a losing candidate has to show specifically that illegal votes changed the outcome of the election — or whether it is enough to show that errors and illegal votes made it impossible to know the true outcome.

Any Supreme Court ruling on the case would not be limited to elections for governors.

"A too 'loose' standard will encourage all losing candidates in close elections to challenge them in court," Aronson said in a e-mail. "Whether they are dismissed out of hand (or discouraged altogether) will depend on how the Supreme Court rules. If the standard is very high, much fewer challenges will be made."

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