The Monkey Wrench Trial

The political trial of our new century begins on Monday, May 23, in Wenatchee, the seat of Chelan County, a small city of about 28,000 known for apple orchards and Republicans. It's nearly the geographical center of the state, and while everyone knows the stakes are high for Washingtonians, Wenatchee also will be the center of attention for politicos nationwide. If the GOP successfully overturns an election of a Democratic governor in court, litigation will become a monkey wrench in campaign toolboxes everywhere.

Republicans and their losing 2004 gubernatorial candidate, former state Sen. Dino Rossi of Sammamish, want Chelan County Superior Court Judge John E. Bridges to nullify the 129-vote, hand- recount victory of Gov. Christine Gregoire, who took office in January. The Republicans want a new vote next November. Aside from possibly forcing an unprecedented off-year gubernatorial election, a Rossi win in court and at the polls would bring a very different set of priorities to state government: business, business, business, and conservative Christianity—in roughly that order. If Rossi loses, either in court or at the polls again, Gregoire would continue in her role as a moderate Democrat who favors targeted tax increases—on sin, gasoline, and the estates of the wealthy, for example—to invest in education, social services, and transportation. It's kind of like the difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry. This trial's outcome will touch every Washington resident.

Election systems are far from perfect anywhere. So a reversal of the outcome here is certain to encourage political operatives elsewhere, too, to swoop in when a margin of victory seems to be less than a margin of error. In that world, expect more legal challenges and fewer concession speeches. Conservative writer John Fund of The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com calls this "the margin of litigation." He observes that lawsuits already have played a role at the presidential level, starting with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision regarding the 2000 Florida tally in Bush v. Gore.

Rossi's case in the trial court of small-apples Wenatchee is officially Timothy Borders et al. v. King County et al.—named for a GOP election observer listed first among several plaintiffs. The others are regular citizens Thomas Canterbury, Tom Huff, Margie Ferris, Paul Elvig, and Edward Monaghan; state GOP Chair Chris Vance; and the Rossi for Governor campaign. Other defendants are the state's 38 other counties and their auditors; Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican; Speaker of the House Frank Chopp, D-Seattle; and Democratic Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, who presides over the Senate.

Republicans have been honing their arguments since the election Nov. 2, and they haven't fared too well in pretrial decisions. They have tried several approaches and discarded them, and now are relying on presumptive statistical analysis to show that Gregoire likely received more illegally cast votes than Rossi did. The Democrats call it "guessing." Imprecision aside, legal experts caution that it is difficult to predict how a judge will rule. An argument that seems to lack all common sense might hold sway, or some testimony might emerge at trial that wins the case for the GOP. That said, the Republicans appear to have a weak case in a court of law.

In the court of public opinion, however, the GOP has already won. Since last November, the Republican Party has run an incredible public relations campaign to discredit the electoral system—particularly King County's—and to label the governor "Fraudoire." Polling data show that the PR campaign has helped Rossi and hurt Gregoire. The strength of the PR effort might even withstand a loss in court.

"The flow of news matched the GOP's game plan," says Western Washington University professor of political science Todd Donovan. Every new revelation from the news media about the failings of our state's electoral administration has brought cries from the GOP of fraud and thievery. Whether it has been screwups with military ballots, failure to reconcile the number of ballots and the number of voters, or voting by felons and dead people, the GOP has held numerous press conferences to rage against the machine that kept Rossi out of the governor's mansion. The Republicans also have brilliantly used elder statesmen—former U.S. Sen. and 9/11 Commission member Slade Gorton, former Gov. Dan Evans, and former Secretary of State Ralph Munro—to protest against this supposed miscarriage of justice. The charges have been repeated endlessly on talk radio and in the blogosphere. You can see the effect in public opinion polls done by Strategic Vision, an Atlanta-based GOP consulting firm.

Strategic Vision conducted polls without a paying client, hoping to raise its visibility in the Washington media market. Four polls of 800 people each between Dec. 30 and March 23, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent, seem credible because they show that the public no longer supports a new election—hardly the Republican Party line. In January, 50 percent of respondents favored a revote and 39 percent were opposed. By March those numbers had reversed, with only 39 percent wanting a new vote for governor and 56 percent opposing. That is consistent with what election professionals know about voters—they are not dying to vote at the drop of a hat. "The last thing a normal citizen wants is more politics," says Dean Nielsen of Progressive Majority, a liberal campaign group.