No Election Fraud in Washington State; The Elect Senator Rossi Campaign Has Just Begun

I guess who ultimately couldn’t see this coming? This election was marred with so much questionable voter fraud that of course the Judge would side for the Democrat. It is hard to imagine that Judge John Bridges could have kept a straight face when he made the comments regarding his ruling to uphold Democrat Christine Gregoire’s victory.

A judge Monday upheld Democrat Christine Gregoire’s victory in the closest race for governor in U.S. history, rejecting Republican claims that last fall’s election was stolen through errors and fraud.

The election — decided by an amazingly close 129 votes out of 2.9 million cast — included 1,678 illegally cast ballots, Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges found. But he said Republicans failed to prove that GOP candidate Dino Rossi would have won if those votes had been disregarded.

“Unless an election is clearly invalid, when the people have spoken their verdict should not be disturbed by the courts,” Bridges said. Nullifying the election, he said, would be “the ultimate act of judicial egotism and judicial activism.”

Unless the election was clearly invalid? What type of sick joke is this? In the ultimate slap in the face, Judge Bridges even went so far as to “throw out only a few illegally cast votes and raised Gregoire’s margin of victory to 133 from 129.”

The Republicans argued that large numbers of votes were illegally cast by felons or cast in the names of dead people; that there were errors in the counting of ballots; and that there was stuffing of the ballot box and destruction of ballots. They concentrated their attacks on Seattle’s heavily Democratic King County, the state’s most populous county.

While the Republicans characterized the election problems as “sinister,” Democrats described them as innocent mistakes that happen in every county, in every election. They said the GOP lacked the clear and convincing proof needed to justify overturning the election.

In his ruling, the judge said the GOP failed to make the case for any deliberate, widespread fraud. He rejected the GOP’s argument that an analytical technique called “proportional deduction” showed that most of the illegal votes cast in the election went to Gregoire. He also held that even using Republicans’ proposed analytical technique, Gregoire still won.

If this had been the other way around Democrats would have been marching and chanting, “no victory, no peace.” So I guess the judge thinks that just fraud is acceptable as long as it is not wide spread. This is simply shameful.

Following the decision Republican Dino Rossi decided not to go ahead to the state Supreme Court with his legal challenge to the 2004 election of Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire.

Reeling from a courtroom rout, Republican Dino Rossi decided today not to press ahead to the state Supreme Court with his legal challenge to the 2004 election of Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire.

“With today’s decision, and because of the political makeup of the Washington State Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending the election contest,” Rossi said at his campaign headquarters in Bellevue.

Bridges turned back the GOP challenge on several fronts. He said the Republicans’ claims of fraud were not supported by any evidence. He rebuffed their statistical proposal for subtracting invalid votes from the candidates, calling it scientifically inadequate. And he rejected their suggested interpretations of state laws and previous court rulings on election challenges.

“I don’t think I can think of anything we argued that he didn’t take lock, stock and barrel,” Democratic lawyer Kevin Hamilton said.

Well isn’t that reassuring? After Democrats have clamored over every election that they should have won like in Florida in 2000 and OH in 2004 because of voter fraud after this man you have no more room for complaint.

Michelle Malkin live blogged the even charade and has a great play by play of the events.

Sound Politics put it best we have “Nothing to do but work harder.”

As voters, we have all the power we need to make these changes, regardless of the decisions of any court, executive or legislature. Our remedy is to be more organized and to work for candidates who believe as we do. This is one election. There will be hundreds more in our lifetimes and we must contest them all. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Let’s just hope that this is the beginning of the Rossi for Senate Campaign run. The voters of Washington State will not forget this. People know when a wrong has been committed no mater what a Judge may rule. Rossi for Senate in 2006.