WA Gov: Day One Afternoon Session a Snoozer

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Once the parties came back to the courtroom for the second half of the day's fabulous trial event, the energy level from the morning dropped right off the table. As Postman indicates, once the two Rossi lawyers began reading directly from Secy of State Reed's deposition, the eyelids began to droop.  Bridges will attempt to preserve the sanity of all involved by reading as much of the 240+ page Dean Logan deposition as he can this evening.

After that was over, the only other witness to have testimony entered was Dan Brady, a Republican observer who basically copped to a bunch of spreadsheets purporting to show felon voter lists. The Rossi lawyer went through each page, methodically asking what evidence was included to show they were ineligible voters. Then Democrat counsel Durkan went through the same list, essentially, making sure that Bridges understood that Brady had not the faintest idea whether they voted for goobernor, and who that vote was for. At least in the Reed deposition they asked different questions.

Really, the only other item of interest from this afternoon is the P-I's Gregory Roberts either getting way ahead of the story, or totally jumping the gun:

Republicans suffered a major blow today to their effort to overturn the result of the 2004 governor's race when a judge said they cannot claim fraud in their legal challenge of Democrat Christine Gregoire's 129-vote victory.

Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges' statement on the overall fraud claim is critical. Under Washington law, a challenger -- in this case defeated Republican candidate Dino Rossi -- most likely would need to establish fraud by one side in the case to get an election overturned simply because the number of improper votes exceeded the margin of victory.

This isn't quite the way I heard it, nor apparently many other people--Bridges didn't say there would be no fraud, but he did make clear that fraud as a specific and independent cause for contest was inadmissible. Gregory does note that Bridges said he would hear the evidence, but still chooses to make it sound as if the GOP ought to just pack up tonight and send a bike courier with a note tomorrow morning saying "Nevermind." From where I sit it's been about that dire for a while now, but most people should understand Bridges well enough by now to know that he won't rule anything out until he has to.

See youse tomorrow for more,
--TJ