Election contest trial: the week ahead

Well, starting tomorrow, our brief respite from the myriad election contest trial will be over, and all eyes will be focused on the Chelan County courthouse once again. On Friday, the GOP rested its case and the Democrats began presenting theirs, beginning by bringing up ten county auditors to testify from the stand.

NWPT48

But in the next four days, we'll see a lot more from the defense as the GOP's claims and allegations are deconstructed and debunked.

I watched the trial every day last week, barely missing a beat. And I wasn't impressed by the GOP's presentation. After I heard Foreman's opening statement on Monday, I became convinced that this case is all about rhetoric and not about solid evidence.

Incompetence is not fraud. That's where a big problem lies: the GOP legal team seems unable to distinguish between the two concepts. They're getting the terms confused.

But even while Rossi's lawyers are mixing things up in court, they're making statements like these outside on the courthouse steps:

“If [Judge Bridges] says we have to show how individual voters voted, we lose,” Virginia-based Republican lawyer Mark Braden said Friday afternoon.

So Braden is basically saying that if Judge Bridges ultimately rejects "proportional deduction", the GOP is screwed.

The judge has allowed the GOP to make its proportional deduction presentation, but he only did that because he wants as much evidence as possible into the record to make it appeal-proof. He doesn't want the state Supreme Court, which doesn't consider new evidence, to send the case back to him. And that's just being smart.

On Friday, Danny Westneat penned a zinger of a column about the GOP'S confusion of fraud and incompetence (Shame on GOP for trial sham) in which he wrote:

That's it? That's all you've got?

After coming into court and saying government officials perpetrated "sinister fraud" to steal the 2004 governor's election, Republicans have finished backing up that claim in the trial in Wenatchee. Their fraud claim, supposedly based on statistical science, wouldn't earn a passing grade on the 10th-grade WASL.

GOP lawyer Dale Foreman told me earlier this week that when I saw the circumstantial evidence of fraud, there would be no doubt in my mind that "somebody was messing with the ballots."

Now that I've seen the evidence, there's no doubt in my mind Republicans ought to be ashamed of themselves.

They've shown plenty of evidence that this election was badly marred by mistakes. But they should retract their bogus fraud allegation, immediately and publicly.

Of course they won't retract anything. It'll be up to the Democrats this week to show how wrong the Republicans really are.

The trial kicks off again tomorrow at 9:30 AM. And once again, NPI member Archerhouse has volunteered to provide live updates for us on Daily Kos. Check in with us tomorrow morning to follow the link to his LIVE Trial Diary.