Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Midday trial update

We're halfway through Day Two of the gubernatorial election challenge trial. Archerhouse has been keeping us informed as to what's been going on at his LIVE Trial Diary. An AP report has also been posted from Wenatchee summarizing what happened this morning:

NWPT48


Judge [Bridges] ruled Tuesday that Republicans should be allowed to introduce evidence about King County's inability to match votes to voters...

The question is how far Bridges will let Republicans go with their claims. Democrats protested that the GOP unveiled the fraud allegations at the very last minute, with no evidence to back them up. Republican attorneys responded that they've been scrambling to gather evidence and were able to conduct some key depositions only a few days ago.

On Monday, Bridges agreed that fraud had never been part of the GOP's election contest petition, and said Republican lawyers couldn't use it as a basis for throwing out the election. But he left the door open for considering the evidence.

"The court does not believe there is a fraud causation element to this case, for whatever that's worth," Bridges said. "I am not saying that the evidence is not admissible."
Once again, Bridges is showing his evenhandedness and his foresight by not closing any doors prematurely.

Today the GOP legal team brought up Evelyn Arnolds, the Chelan County Auditor, to testify about elections procedures. The GOP is trying to show that other counties conducted the election differently than King County. The Democrats' Jenny Durkan provided strong counterpoints in her cross-examination.

Then the GOP called up Bill Huennekens. He'll likely be on the witness stand for much of the rest of the day. The GOP is on full attack mode with Huennekens - Maguire even asked the court if he could treat the King County elections supervisor as a hostile witness. King County deputy prosecuting attorney Don Porter objected, and Bridges subsequently denied Maguire's request. David Goldstein has joked that the Republicans are out to Kill Bill.

Archerhouse's reports are pretty detailed, if you want more specifics on what happened. He'll create another LIVE Trial Diary for this afternoon.

David Postman of the Seattle Times continues to send us his dispatches from the courthouse in Wenatchee as well.

David Goldstein is also providing similar updates for his readers at HorsesAss.org (Tuesday’s tedious election contest blog)

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