Wrapping Up Day One
Day One of the Washington State gubernatorial election challenge is just about over, with about a half an hour left today in court as of my writing this.
Our own David Goldstein (Goldy) of HorsesAss.org waded into enemy territory today with his nine minute appearance on John Carlson's KVI AM 570 show. We recorded an audio clip of the show, which you can listen to here.
It hasn't been an extremely eventful day, but the Seattle P-I is running a story entitled, "Setback for GOP in governor election trial" (by P-I reporter Gregory Roberts, with reporting from the AP):
We have a full wrap up of what transpired today - and we're launching our index of all Pacific Northwest Portal-affiliated blog posts about the trial.
Our own David Goldstein (Goldy) of HorsesAss.org waded into enemy territory today with his nine minute appearance on John Carlson's KVI AM 570 show. We recorded an audio clip of the show, which you can listen to here.
NWPT48
It hasn't been an extremely eventful day, but the Seattle P-I is running a story entitled, "Setback for GOP in governor election trial" (by P-I reporter Gregory Roberts, with reporting from the AP):
Republicans suffered a major blow today to their late-developing strategy to claim fraud in the 2004 governor's race when a judge said that claim cannot stand as a key to their legal challenge of Democrat Christine Gregoire's 129-vote victory.It's an interesting take on today's events. The judge hasn't yet ruled on the Democrats' motion to have the fraud charge excluded (which they presented earlier today) because he wanted to give the GOP time to craft a response. He'll rule on the motion tomorrow. Bridges did agree with Democrats that fraud has not been an official part of the Republicans' claim. But he stopped short of excluding the evidence.
The decision by Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges was critical because a challenger most likely would need to establish fraud to get an election overturned simply because the number of illegal votes exceeds the margin of victory.
Without fraud, the challenger - in this case, GOP candidate Dino Rossi - faces the much more difficult burden of showing that the winner owes victory to improper votes.
Bridges' decision came in response to a Democratic motion challenging Republican attorneys' fraud allegations.
After Bridges' decision, Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane said the Republicans would still be able to present evidence of illegal votes.
We have a full wrap up of what transpired today - and we're launching our index of all Pacific Northwest Portal-affiliated blog posts about the trial.
