Weekend Trialblogging
Trial On The Brain
On Monday Judge Bridges will conclude the Rossi Power Grab Trial with a verdict at 9am. As I've said before, the prospects for a Rossi victory look gloomy, but whatever the outcome, expect the decision to be appealed to the State Supreme Court by the losing side.
Meanwhile Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat chimes in with his thoughts on the outcome:
"I can't read the sphinx [Judge Bridges], but here's what I think he ought to do. He should tell King County to get its act together. He should scold the GOP for making wild allegations.I have a hunch this will come pretty close to what the judge will do. Stay tuned! (nwphtt48) (pbu23)
"He should subtract the roughly 1,500 votes that everybody agrees are illegal.
"It won't make any difference in the outcome. At which point he should wish the politicians "good luck in 2008" and bring the 2004 election mercifully to an end."
Posted at 6/05/2005 12:01:00 PM PT
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9 Comment(s):
Too funny on the picture. Where do you go hiking on Mercer Island? After living in Bellevue and Seattle for several years, we always went out of town. But as I am getting older, shorter and easier walks have a fascination.
There is a cool walk in Everett that no one knows about. It starts at the treatment plant, heads south on the river/slough at water level, turns a 180 and ends up at the bird sanctuary which goes another mile or so. From there it backtracks to the plant.
As for the election, I don't have a feeling one way or another how it would go. But, I do know that if it doesn't get overturned, the problems won't get fixed. It takes a major spanking to get a sense of urgency, unless, of course, you think things are hunky-dory and it was one of the best elections in history.
swatter - the hike was on Whidbey Island and Ebey's Landing bluff trail. Not much hiking to be done on Mercer, although a stroll through Luther Burbank Park is always pleasurable.
I think that some election reform legislation has already been enacted, but regardless of the outcome of this trial we should all agree to be of one voice to ensure election reform continues.
I don't know how I read Mercer Island in there.
I don't know how election reform can be done, except, as my office mate says, don't make it so close next time.
My take on the judge's decision was that it would be impossible to overturn an election, instead of difficult.
I respect his call, though I wanted King County spanked more than they were.
I think the judge quite clearly indicated in his remarks how an election might be overturned:
- if one knew exactly who the illegal votes went to. The ones he was sure about he deducted from the totals - 4 from Rossi, 1 from Bennett. If the Rossi lawyers had been able to prove who voted for who that would have done it. In fact we do know how some of the dead votes went, but it would seem that info was never entered as evidence, so it wasn't added to the deducted vote tally.
- the other way is to prove fraud. The GOP simply had no proof. What would be proof? Seeing it happen. Having multiple witnesses of the fraud. This isn't impossible proof if fraud did happen. In this case, there was no evidence of fraud, and common sense, as Shark at SP would have us refer to, would have one conclude that what some wanted to believe was fraud, was no more than a matter of people discovering the complexities, problems and errors of a statewide election in such detail for the very first time.
As Rumsfeld once said, "Democracy is messy".
The reality is that errors will occur. What we as voters can do is make it clear to our legislators that this is a bipartisan concern. No one wants to see this in court again. We can improve how the system works. We also have to accept that doing so will probably cost money.
I have a hard time believing that illegal felons honestly said who they were voting for. Do you?
And who is to say the illegals even voted for governor unless you could locate their vote?
It is an impossible standard. Too bad we can't agree on even this.
And would the judge have deducted votes if the Rs complained? Of course not. The Rs were on another tact. A tact that would have made the judge an activist judge. Thank goodness he didn't try to take a crummy law and make it good. It is the worst thing that can happen in the democracy.
If it is a bad law throw it out and make the legislature rewrite it. But a Superior Court judge can't do it, but the Supremes can.
If only for clarity, I would like to see it happen, but I doubt Rossi will do it just to get clarity.
Case over.
You had a lot of meat on that post. Rumsfield? Is he some king of election guru now? Is the Washington election going to be a bloodbath pretty soon? There was too much Howard Dean in that comment.
And when errors were discovered, signatures were blazened on false reports? The thing is, even so, there is no way to know if the illegals voted for governor or which one that was credited without producing the document.
I hope we don't come to that.
- Yes, I believe the few that said who they voted for actually did vote for the people they said they voted for. There are all kinds of people in the world, and some are quite simple in that way.
- Impossible standard? Let's agree that is a high standard, as such things should be.
- The point is that the impossible standard is the perfect election. The standards in place need to be met with better execution of election procedures. There is room for improvement - that we can easily agree on.
Bridges really made things simple: he could not know if a vote was cast for the gubernatorial position, let alone Rossi vs. Gregoire. He wasn't going to guess. The conundrum is that votes are cast in anonymity. It is unlikely that will change. The Judge did say that we make it perhaps too easy to vote, so let's look at how to reasonably address that problem.
I'm pretty optimistic that between now and the next major elections some things can be vastly improved on. We should all remind our legislators we think that's an important thing for them to remain focused on.
I like your next to last paragraph.
But, isn't that impossible to determine given the thousand or so illegal votes/ers? But, you are right, impossible is a high standard all right.
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