Republicans fail in their attempt to intervene in signature verification legal challenge

A Repub­li­can major­i­ty of U.S. Supreme Court jus­tices have demol­ished the 1965 Vot­ing Rights Act, a land­mark achieve­ment of the civ­il rights move­ment, as well as using the 2010 Cit­i­zens Cor­po­ra­tions Unit­ed deci­sion to remove restraints on cam­paign spend­ing begun when Theodore Roo­sevelt was president.

At the low­er court lev­el, how­ev­er, the Grand Old Par­ty has con­tin­ued to suf­fer loss after loss, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the Trump attempt to over­turn the out­come of our 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and attacks on vot­ing laws in states which have sought to make it eas­i­er to cast ballots.

The Seat­tle-based bicoastal Perkins Coie law firm used to be a white shoe out­fit, known for two sig­na­ture clients, the Boe­ing Com­pa­ny and Puget Sound Pow­er and Light. Long­time Boe­ing CEO William Allen and Puget Pow­er boss (lat­er Seat­tle Mariners pres­i­dent) John Ellis were alum­ni of the firm. Such were pil­lars of the busi­ness wing of Repub­li­can­ism in the Ever­green State.

In recent years, how­ev­er, P‑C has devel­oped a spe­cial­ty in elec­tion law, and has come to rep­re­sent Democ­rats… includ­ing the state par­ty, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, and Barack and Michelle Oba­ma. Two of Pres­i­dent Clinton’s picks to the U.S. 9th Cir­cuit Court of Appeals came from Perkins Coie.

The firm rep­re­sent­ed Maria Cantwell in the post-elec­tion bat­tle over her 2,229-vote 2000 upset of Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Slade Gorton.

Perkins Coie was in Chelan Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ing Gov­er­nor Chris Gregoire’s 133-vote 2004 vic­to­ry over Dino Rossi.

It han­dled the pro­longed lit­i­ga­tion, after the 2008 elec­tion, that sent for­mer Sat­ur­day Night Live come­di­an Al Franken to the U.S. Senate.

Perkins Coie fought off Trump chal­lenges to Pres­i­dent Biden’s 2020 cap­ture of Geor­gia and has defend­ed Democ­rats’ 2022 vic­to­ries in Arizona.

It suc­cess­ful­ly sued to over­turn actions by Montana’s Repub­li­can-run leg­is­la­ture that sought to make it dif­fi­cult for Native Amer­i­cans to vote, and to put obsta­cles in the way of col­lege voters.

Nat­u­ral­ly, then, Perkins Coie was picked by three groups – El Cen­tro de la Raza, Wash­ing­ton Bus and VetVoice – to chal­lenge the sig­na­ture ver­i­fi­ca­tion require­ments in Washington’s vote-by-mail sys­tem.

They’ve recent­ly filed suit in King Coun­ty Super Court, argu­ing that the require­ment vio­lates the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion as thou­sands of legit­i­mate vot­ers grap­ple with hav­ing their bal­lots reject­ed. The rejec­tions fall dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on Black vot­ers, young peo­ple, and the disabled.

Enter the Republicans.

There have long been rum­bles in the Repub­li­can ranks over how “easy” it is to vote in the Ever­green State, even though our elec­tions were long under super­vi­sion of five suc­ces­sive Repub­li­cans hold­ing the office of Sec­re­tary of State.

The state Repub­li­can Par­ty, with some fan­fare, sought to inter­vene in the sig­na­ture case, joined by the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. They were bent on defend­ing sig­na­ture ver­i­fi­ca­tion. The root rea­son, in words of RNC Chair Ron­na McDaniel: “Mail-in vot­ing increas­es the oppor­tu­ni­ty for fraud.”

“And they brought in the big guns, Trump’s lawyers from the Consovoy McCarthy law firm, and paired them with the team from Davis Wright that rep­re­sent­ed Dino Rossi in his failed con­test over the 2004 elec­tion,” report­ed Perkins Coie lawyer Kevin Hamil­ton, vet­er­an of the Cantwell, Gre­goire, Franken and Geor­gia bat­tles, in an amused memo.

They lost. King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Cather­ine Shaf­fer has denied the motion to inter­vene. “If there’s one thing this case does not need, it’s Trump’s lawyers try­ing to defend the inde­fen­si­ble,” Hamil­ton chortled.

The Repub­li­cans’ phi­los­o­phy on lit­i­ga­tion is nev­er to spend one dol­lar when two (or more) will do. Judge Shaf­fer may have saved the par­ty some mon­ey, need­ed until recent­ly (when he announced his can­di­da­cy) to pay Trump’s legal bills.

And embar­rass­ment.

A few years back, the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union – rep­re­sent­ed by Perkins Coie – sued the city of Yaki­ma over city-wide elec­tion of city coun­cil and school board mem­bers. More than forty per­cent of the city’s pop­u­la­tion is Lati­no and His­pan­ic, but no Lati­no or Lati­na had ever won elec­tion to any city office.

The city fought against the suit, filed under the Vot­ing Rights Act, and spent through the nose. The plain­tiffs’ legal briefs were so con­vinc­ing, how­ev­er, that a fed­er­al judge deliv­ered a sum­ma­ry judgment.

The com­po­si­tion of the Yaki­ma City Coun­cil was for­ev­er changed.