The judge, on his own, made some passing comment about felons would be sexist enough to vote against Gregiore for that reason. That comment revals a lot. I don't think that he would be too receptive to actual evidence.

They only needed to subtract 70 from her tally and add to Rossi's to reverse the election. At $100 each, seems that we would have had no problem finding willing participants.

If my understanding of the ruling is correct, $7000 would have put Rossi in office. Small change compared to the $2+ million spent on lawyers.

That's what really upset me, KCE counted some ballots and not others. This could be a very subtle way of throwing the election. Whose to say that the newly found absentees were'nt simply withheld from the count. There would be no real evidence or way to prevent that from happening, and in a close race, that could easily change the outcome, especially when absentees are skewed more towards Republicans.

We've got to move on now, but I'm more politically active then I've ever been. When the elections come up for our State Legislature in 2006 and 2008, I'll be making sure that in my local (and very liberal) community, the people here know exactly how the candiadates voted regarding the election, election reforms, etc.

Judge Bridges' comment was that based upon the testimony presented to him, gender was a better way to determine how a person voted over geography. Given the two known quantities, gender and precint, gender is the better predictor. Hence, statistically speaking, if we are talking about a male felon who lives on Captitol Hill, his gender tells you more about his vote than his geography. Note: The judge said none of this passed Frye, and he wasn't about to assign votes to the felons based upon gender.

As to the commentator, he makes some good points. I am also very surprised that the GOP didn't put together a better case since they knew going in what they had to prove. Most of the important decisions came months ahead of the case.

But do you really think that the GOP, BIAW or at least one first year associate at Davis Wright Tremain didn't call around to the felons on their list? If they didn't (and I'm sure they did) that would be legal malpractice. The fact that they didn't put any of that evidence on would tend to show that when they called and checked around, the trends were not in their favor.

As to the impeachment of the Democrats' Felons for Rossi, note that the Dems's lawyers did their jobs. They didn't just deposed the Felons for Rossi, they also made sure they had collateral evidence to support their theory, donations to the GOP, Rossi, GWB, thank you notes from GWB, etc. etc. Davis Wright Tremain is a good law firm, there is not a chance that they didn't try to do the same thing. They knew what they had to prove.

As for grounds on appeal, there were of course several, from the Judge assigning the "clear and convincing" standard to wether he relied on Foulkes or not. These are questions of law, and are not given the great deference as evidentiary questions.

The Judge did give the GOP almost everything it wanted as far as evidence, so they could not challange him on those grounds. However, this means that they had a very rich record for appeal. I would tend to agree with the Frye analysis, however I'm not sure you could have done better with other experts. Speculation is not enough, and there simply is not enough information on felon voting trends in the state of Washington to back anything more than guess work.

Finally, and this is one area I tried to bring up and that many of the "legal" analysis on this board, horsesass and others missed, Courts do not want to get involved in what are political questions. As a judge made clear, it would be arogance and activism on his part to overturn the election without a clear showing that it was in error. If you have a problem with the system, you can always change the government, that is how the system works.

Which is why Rossi's "political makeup of the court" comment was such a cheap shot. Take Judge Bridges decision to an appeal pannel of Scalia, Thomas and Renquist, and he still gets shot down. If Rossi had simply said "we tried our best, and brought out many of the problems with the system, and I am proud of that, but we do not have any evidence of Fraud or any one trying to cheat the system, so I am bringing this court case to an end so we can work on changing the system, not the fortunes of one man," he could have recovered much of the good standing he lost over the two weeks of trial. Instead, he played the victim.

My take on the porportianl analysis is that Judge Bridges would not have accepted it no matter what the petitioners argued or presented. It does not matter whether they took into account party, gender, candidate gender, marriage status, minorty makeup, etc. Even if all that were given due statistical consideration it would not have done any good, so it is pointless to speculate what the republicans could have done to strengthen their case.

I ahve three reasons for this: First, the judge took the testamony of experts who were NOT election specialists over those who were. The judge failed to use proportional deduction to account for any OTHER illegal ballots that might have met the criteria presented by Gill and Kats such as provisional ballots, and third the judge referenced the need to know IF a ballot included a vote for the gubernatorial race before he would consider deducting it from the race.

Ultimatley, the judge made it clear that the ONLY way to deduct a vote from a particular candidate is to know with certainty that the ballot was illegal, that it included a gubernatorial vote, and that the the candidate for hom the vate was cast is clearly identified. Nothing less would have done because there was always the possiblity that a valid vote would be unfairly deducted from a calndidate. It seems that he leans more toward erring on the side of too many rather than too few.

Unfortunately, by setting that standard, he makes it very celar that the only way to protect from fraud is to not let it occur in the first place, because once it does, there is no legal means in the state of Washington to undo it. You could have cought someone in the act of stuffing a ballot box and if you could not identify clearly which ones he placed there, and he refused to indicate if any included votes in teh gubernatorial election much less for whom, then all those votes would have to be accepted accourding to the standard set by Bridges.

Since our legislature seems to prefer to allow fraud, we will be stuck with this kind of problem for a long time.

WA state illegally counted 1678 votes. That is FRAUD.

Election officials made up numbers. That is FRAUD.

Were you paying attention at all?

In making his factual determination, Judge Bridges relied on an incorrect definition of crediting, one which was shown to be incorrect by the facts that came out at trial.

If the factual determination was shown to be wrong, then it might have been possible to show that the voterless ballots (absentee and provisional) were illegal, and subject to proportional deduction.

Here is the hypothesis I previously posted on a different thread:

"Judge Bridge's Flawed Ruling"

"I see at least one possible avenue for winning on appeal.

"Towards the end of his remarks, the judge stated that it could not be ascertained who had voted, from the crediting record.

"This indicates that he stuck with the misleading and incorrect definition put forward by various elections officials and seconded by the Dems, that crediting is an essentially meaningless post-canvassing exercise.

"While not completely unexpected (due to one of his pre-trial rulings), this was a big disappointment, as testimony during the trial had clearly established that crediting is an integral part of the process required by statute to ensure that people don't vote twice.

"The effect of this was to remove a means by which illegal votes might have been proven. In light of the judge's refusal to accept proportional deduction (I find his insistance on an answer to the "scientific question" off the mark, as the question facing him was a legal/political one) with respect to the felon voters, this became a critical issue.

"The judge dismissed the misconduct by the KC Elections officials, saying that even though it had occurred, Petitioners had failed to prove there were illegal votes, so no harm was done.

"It is unfortunate that the Reps didn't ask the judge to reconsider his earlier ruling on crediting, in light of the trial testimony. However, if it can be shown that the judge erred in relying on the incorrect definition of crediting, and should instead have used the one that came out during the trial, then it may be possible to prove illegal votes based on the pre-canvass crediting.

"These illegal votes would be the voterless ballots in both the absentee and provisional counts. For these votes, proportional deduction might be acceptable, as these votes constitute the universe of such illegal votes (as determined by the official KCE records), and also because these votes cannot be tied to specific voters, thus there is no argument that these votes differ in distribution from the rest of the votes, due to being cast by males, or felons, etc.

"Having thus proven illegal votes, the misconduct by KCE would have to be reconsidered, in furtherance of the argument that misconduct by elections officials had rendered the actual result of the election unknowable."

(Posted by: ewaggin on June 6, 2005 01:06 PM)

Now that was a cogent and logical post with reasonable analysis (for the most part.) :)

I have to disagree on one or two points. It is possible that Davis Wright Tremain considered the possiblity of identifying felon votes, but there are two problems with this. Would it be possible to find 130 felons willing to testify in court that they voted for Gregoire in the time available? Sure one could find 5 people and find the requisite "supporting evidence", but to do it for 130, AND to protect themselves from counter arguments of "cherry picking", would have probably been impossible and may very well have been an even worse strategy.

This brings to my mind another quibble I have with some people using these 5 felons as "proof" that proportial anaysis is flawed. Proportial analysis does not claim that every felon in every pro Gregoire precint voted for Gregoire, so the finding of one who did NOT is no proof that it is a faulty methodolgy. If, let's say 60% are expected to vote democrat in a particular Gregoire precinct that had 10 felon votes, finding 4 felons that voted for Rossi would still have proven nothing.

The problem with your argument is that the only way to prove it on a vote by vote basis would have been to get the specific votes on EVERY felon in every precinct. This is not a "reasonable" rquirement, so to suggest that DWT should have taken that tack is a litle absurd. The fact that they did not is not proof that they were negligent in their represenation, nor is it proof that they discovered the felons did not vote the way they predicted. It simply presented too great a burden to produce unimpeachealbe felon testamonies in such numbers as to "prove" that felon votes tipped the scales.

Proportional analysis had been used in other cases and had a decent enough legal pedigree and could be presented in the time frame allowed in court, so it was a reasonable legal strategy to use.

Any real lawyers want to make a comment on what I have said?

I think the judge was overwhelmed by the statistical evidence arguments and decided to ignore it all. I can't say I like that approach but I can't totally fault him for it based on the no-win requirements of the election contest statutes.

The bottom line to this whole election fiasco IMO is Christine Gregoire is now even more illegitimate than before because we now have a court record that at least 1678 illegal votes were cast in this election. With a margin of "victory" of 240+, 42, or 129 for the three counts, it's hard for any logically thinking person to believe we actually know who the true winner was... and I believe that will forever hang over Ms Gregoire, who's future in politics I would say is not too bright.

Then again, Patty "no brain" Murray has been re-elected twice, so I guess anything could happen :-)

For those not corrupted by the bizarre sophmorics of this legal administration, they need only think what the consequences would have been had those liars and frauds in the election offices instead had been truthful and honest.

It takes no more than a modicum of common sense to see that the consequences would be a realization that King County elections would never have been able to certify returns, hence the election would never have been concluded else all King County votes would be thrown out and Rossi declared the winner.

So to say that the decision to lie and fabricate a fraud in King County elections could not be proven to have impact on the outcome is absurd.

Only those engaged in a bizarre legal cult could think otherwise.

But I don't buy his "I slept good every night during the trial." If it was so slam dunk, why didn't the dems just save some coin and not send a legal team?

Any hoot, I now find calm just looking a little longer at the anti-ACLU t-shirt.

Neither one of us should be surprised if an idiot gets elected. Look at G.W. "Everything I've been in charge of, I've run into the ground" Bush. Sadly, we must both come to grips with the fact that everyone, except you and I, are idiots. ;)

Michael:

As far as I know, I'm not a part of some bizzare legal cult, I will check. But I do know one thing, that it could not be proved in a court of law that there was fraud or fabrications in King County elections. No wonder the GOP couldn't prove an impact.

MB:

You are right, ever since the ACLU defended Rush Limbaugh, I've really question them. Makes you wonder why O'Reiley couldn't get people to go on his anti-ACLU cruise with him.

Look at what you saying. It's unbelievable.

Nicole Way admitted to fabricating a number because you and her coworkers couldn't follow the law. She and they lied to cover up the fact they could not follow the law.

People such as yourself are not only bizarre in your thinking, you are dangerous to democracy.

I sincerely hope you will downgrade your legal education and perspective in order to realize what has truly transpired in this election.

The lies of Nicole Way and Garth Fell, the coverup permitted by Bill Huennekins and others, resulted in the installation of a gubernatorial candidate by illegitimate means. This view is unchanged whether the installed candidate were Rossi or Gregoire.

THEY COULD NOT RECONCILE RETURNS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAW, HENCE THE CERTIFICATION IS INVALID.

They lied and have created an illegitimate election process. Had they been truthful, bearing harsh professional consequences, the voters although enraged would demand and receive a LEGITIMATE election process.

To say their actions had no causative impact on the elections is ABSURD.