Posted on 01/11/2005 4:02:08 PM PST by nyg4168
OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Democrat Christine Gregoire was certified as the governor of Washington state on Tuesday, while outside the Capitol her supporters traded jeers with protesters across a line of state troopers.
Inside the Capitol, Republicans' attempt to delay the election certification failed after an hour of almost surreally polite debate.
Gregoire lost the first two counts in the amazingly close election, but won by just 129 votes after a hand recount of 2.9 million ballots. Next comes Gregoire's inauguration, planned for Wednesday - and then it's on to the courts. The first hearing in Republican Dino Rossi's election challenge is scheduled for Friday.
"No do-over, no delay," said Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane. "Let's move on with the business of the Legislature."
Republicans pleaded in vain for a waiting period.
A two-week delay is a small price to pay to restore confidence in this election," said Rep. Mike Armstrong, R-Wenatchee. "This is a historic time and we cannot afford to rush this process."
During the counting and recounting of the governor's election, many questions and discrepancies have surfaced. The main argument in the Republican's lawsuit is that King County, a Democratic stronghold and the state's largest county, cannot match more than a thousand votes to actual voter names. That discrepancy, Rossi argues, makes the election invalid on its face.
Democrats disagree, saying the state constitution sets a very high bar for throwing out the results of an election. They say the revote that Rossi wants would be unconstitutional.
While the debate in the state House and Senate's joint session was oh-so-civilized, supporters of Rossi and Gregoire screamed their frustrations at one another at dueling rallies on the Capitol lawn.
More than 1,000 Rossi supporters were there demanding a revote, and about 200 Gregoire supporters held a counter-demonstration. Chants of "revote!" overpowered the cries of "Go home Rossi!"
Norman Le, 70, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Vietnam, wore a sticker proclaiming "Dino Rossi is my governor."
"Three times they counted and they come up with three different results - it makes no sense at all," Le said. "They should fix it. It's not too late. ... If we have a governor who is elected in a flawed election, that governor does not have the respect of the people to govern. The whole state will suffer."
Pro-Rossi demonstrators held signs saying "Heal Washington: Revote," "Gregoire: Stealing Democracy," and "Re-Elect Rossi 2005."
Across the street, and separated by state troopers, Gregoire supporter Rhenda Strub held a homemade sign saying "Dino, your horse is dead."
"It's time for him to end his temper tantrum and move on," said Strub, 49, of Olympia.
No arrests were reported from the dueling rallies, which dissipated in the early afternoon.
A court hearing for Rossi's election challenge is set for Friday in Chelan County Superior Court in Wenatchee. The case will most likely end up in the state Supreme Court.
This is not Ukraine.
There is ample evidence of fraud.
Rossi and his friends have wasted weeks appealing to public opinion, which can do nothing, and have failed to file suit to stop this process in a court of competent jurisdiction.
That has been a major error.
I await the Chelan judge's edict.....
Of course, the b**** wasn't saying that after the first recount....and the second recount, was she? They had all the time in the world at that point.
Huh? Did you miss the part where he filed a contest of the election in state court? The first hearing is on Friday.
If they had enough to sue to overturn the results, they would have done so.
Will there be protests there as well?
Well, if the Washingtonians don't care enough to protest en masse, why should I care...?
Rossi would have been within his rights to demand that the hand-count be invalidated because election workers altered ballots in a manner expressly forbidden my law, and the number of altered ballots exceeds the Rat margin of victory. On the other hand, even if he had managed to win such a challenge, he would have been tarred as having been "selected not elected".
State law does provide for a revote in situations where a combination of negligence and/or malfeasance make it impossible to acertain the winner with confidence. Because the number of invalid votes is known to exceed the margin of victory by a factor of at least ten, that would certainly seem to be the case here.
Unless they filed for an injunction to stop the seating of the losing candidate in the election, they have no hope.
I hope someone starts a recall effort in Washington!
**This in an outrage. Could you imagine the media hype and the protest if the GOP Candidate had won only after three counts.**
I agree completely!
Yes, the state constitution states that an election can only be thrown out if a republican wins. I think every elected republican in the state ought to just walk off the job. Pack up and move to a state where the people are honest.
This is a shame.
Agreed. Shut the state down.
By that standard, why even read posts on FreeRepublic?
But you're right, the turnout was pathetic.
After demanding re-counts until the desired result was claimed by a handful of new-found "votes", Gregoire had the classically-Democrat nerve to dismiss a Republican request for yet another re-count as "ludicrous".
If there is one thing that is consistent with liberals, it is their expectation of double standards. Althogh I'm not sure that is quite accurate terminology, since they expect standards they determine should be applied to their enemies but expect there to be no standards whatsoever for themselves.
Apparently you're just not familiar with the law in the State of Washington. There is a clear process laid out in the law, and the Rossi camp has been working it with all deliberate speed.
The certification by the legislature today and the inaguration tomorrow are not things that can be stopped. The only option is to file a contest to the election, and that could only happen once the election was first certified by the Secretary of State. The secretary certified the election on last friday, and Rossi immediately filed the contest. The contest hearing is now scheduled to be heard in Chelan County on Friday.
The process is underway. The grounds for the contest are plentiful. We'll see what happens.
The law does not allow for a recount to be invalidated. The only option is to show before a judge that the election had sufficient irregularities to throw out the entire vote, and to conduct another vote.
That is the only mechanism in the law.
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