Last day of trial begins

The Court has reconvened this morning at 9:00 AM for the last day of Week Two in the election contest trial. The judge will be issuing an oral ruling on Monday.

The News Tribune has an interesting story this morning on Bridges' possible indecision on a key issue in the case:

As he closed in on a self-imposed Monday deadline to decide whether to overturn Democrat Christine Gregoire’s victory in last fall’s governor’s race, Judge John Bridges signaled Thursday that he’s still pondering how to deal with a critical issue in the case.

NWPT48

If the Chelan County Superior Court judge rejects Republicans’ request to use a statistical formula to deduct illegal votes from the tallies of Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi, it could sink the GOP lawsuit to oust Gregoire.

If Bridges accepts the formula, he’d become the first judge in state history to accept a vote tally produced that way, and it could very well result in the annulment of Gregoire’s 129-vote victory.

Bridges has made clear throughout the course of the historic nine-day trial that he’s not looking forward to the decision. On Thursday, the cause of his concern again became clear.

After Democratic and Republican experts both claimed their candidates would prevail under a formula, known as proportional deduction, Bridges puzzled over the two sides’ divergent results in rare direct questioning of the dueling experts.

And once again, NPI member Archerhouse is doing a LIVE Trial Diary at Daily Kos, keeping you apprised to developments out of Wenatchee. We'll post more lengthy updates here as well. And Pacific NW Portal has also been updated with the latest news stories on the court case.