The Chelan County Hearing Transcripts, Part One: Morning Session

I have been trying to get a hold of this since it became available, but the GOP has done the work for me and included it as part of their filing last Friday.  A very generous hat tip to them that provided it to me.  Chelan County, February 4, 2005: Bridges' Rulings.

The first thought I had after reading it was "whew," because it's pretty much as I remember hearing it, but I did miss some parts in the morning early on, fighting a proxy server and skittish feed.  I recall at the time one of the Seattle media referring to the rulings as "lecture-style," which is definitely right. The transcript reads out very smoothly in support of the decisions. If you're not a big legal jargon reader, give a few pages of this a try (I'd skip to the afternoon session if you do that). Since Bridges has now affirmed and signed these orders, and also declined to refine them in any way, this becomes an excellent ruler for how he is likely to view and review the evidence.

I want to run back through each of the individual rulings, to restate his opinion and relate anything from the transcript that I missed in my live-blog of it:

The first two decisions in the morning came bam-bam after argument, and they are closely related: jurisdiction on subject matter, and venue.  The Democrats as the intervenor (the Rossi people used a Washington resident to bring suit against the county auditors as defendants) argued some odd points  about wanting the Legislature to handle the election. The Democratic members of the statehouse had just finished interviews talking about how the courts were the place to settle this, and now the party counsel were arguing that the courts can't handle it.  It was, as the right charged, a fairly blatant attempt to wrest control of the process in a partisan legislature that would keep Gregoire installed.

I think the Democratic Party dodged a bullet when Bridges ruled against them, noting as he did that no one had ever really questioned the ability of the Legislature to defer the process to the courts in 116 years of the Constitution, and so in fact they had-- in RCW 29A 68.011. It's not as if Democratic counsel was likely to have missed that part of the Code, and perhaps in recognition of this Bridges cites the Secretary of State in 1977 denouncing the idea that a partisan legislature would decide a partisan election contest.

Why do I say they dodged a bullet? Because they're going to get a far better shake in court, and they will shut out the ability of the Republican Party in Washington to take control of the debate. The Democrats may have nakedly prevailed given the chance, but the scent of the partisan battle would have been damaging to the legitimacy of the office, in my opinion.

Bridges rules similarly on the question of venue, finding that under the same direction of 68.011, the entire justice system of the state is eligible to hear contests for governor. By law and practice, as long as any participants were involved in the case, venue was proper. Obviously by suing all 39 county auditors, any county was possible...and there's no small chance that this was done on purpose by the GOP. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself based on subsequent rulings, but for now we'll say that Bridges said moving to a more favorable county or bypassing him altogether was not going to happen. I liked that; most trial judges who know they will be appealed are all too happy to cede venue or issue an ineffective ruling.

Those two rulings got the Rossi train rolling out in the local media and blogosphere, since they were two clear wins on two things they wanted. There was more argument, from a string of counsel for county auditors who said "wha, me?" in wondering why they were named in the suit. However, they were annoyed enough by the prospect that they moved for dismissal on the basis of non-timeliness, arguing that because contests were not received by them within 10 days of their own final certificaiton, Rossi had missed the deadline. This was rather summarily dismissed by Bridges, placing the deadline with the final certification by the legislature on January 10, of which all of Rossi's challenges complied.

There was an interesting note I did catch the first time I went through--Bridges rules negatively on the appropriateness of the Rossi campaign as a petitioner, and then promptly ignores his own opinion and leaves them in, "mindful of the statute" that apparently prohibits them, he says. His rationale? That the Democrats and Libertarians are inappropriate too, so it's all good in the end.  Better to have the parties represented I suppose, so that all the arguments can be heard in court rather than bandied about outside it.

The last ruling of the morning session was perhaps the second most surprising, given the concentration and focus the Rossi campaign had leveled against King County, and the opportunity to place them as defendants rather than witnesses. Bridges rejected the motions of timeliness on filing, then summarily dismissed ALL counties and their auditors from the case. He notes that Rossi cites the Pemberton case to try to force them to stay in for purposes of discovery, but Bridges doesn't buy the logic--you can force them to give up discovery whether they're on trial or not, because they're county offices.

And then just before lunch Bridges dropped a giant hint:

I had the impression that one of the arguments made was that if the Court were to grant the relief, if the evidence was sufficient, the Court would be ordering a new election. Now of course, that's an issue that we're going to decide this afternoon apparently, but I don't think it's necessary that the counties be in even if that was a remedy the Court could afford so--because that's going to happen pursuant to state law, in any event.

The court broke for lunch.

By the afternoon, the Rossi people were feeling cocky and Mary Lane was surely at the top of her biorhythm, because the judge had generally found that while the counties didn't need to be parties to the contest in order to have the allegations against them reviewed, the allegations were enough such that it was possible they could have turned the election, on a purely hypothetical basis. And after extensive argument, Bridges finished with another string of rulings that again saved the best for last.

[part two forthcoming...]
--TJ

Comments

[chew2]

TJ,

Where did you get the GOP pleading? As soon as I read the transcript was attached to the GOP memorancum I looked for it on various sites, but coudln't find the GOP memo. Was it just posted?

While I agree from a policy point of view, that its better to have the case in Court, I found Bridges claim that the 1977 amendments to the election laws constituted such a legislative delegation too cursory to be persuasive.

Judge Bridges is very persuaded by the broad claim of judicial power in Foulkes, a very poorly reasoned case. And as I feared he uses it to find that the errors statute, .011, INDEPENDENTLY creates grounds for a contest on the basis of "misconduct", "neglect", and "error in the issuance of a certificate of election. God knows what he could find was an "error" or "neglect" if he wanted to. True he explicitly states that any claim under .011 will have to meet the requirements of .070. I'll comment more on this when you address it. But I really do blame the DEM lawyers for not addressing Foulkes more in their briefs.

BTW are you a lawyer?

[Torrid]

Nope, not a lawyer. And I don't think I've been authorized to say where I got my copy. I've come across it, let's say. Maybe I'm making a cloak and dagger situation where there is none, but I haven't asked so I won't say.

I'm more sanguine about his ruling I think, because I agree with the level of standard at each step. You have to be liberal in receiving causes for contest IMO, because otherwise you cut off that avenue at birth in too many cases. The pre-trial standard of "can this be taken seriously," is fair enough for me, and while I think it's an entirely thin case, the nature of the margin and the general truth about the number of apparent illegally cast votes makes it rationally questionable.

Foulkes is going to be relied on no matter what the Dems try, I think, since it seems to be the closest analogue to what Rossi is claiming (even though it's not really very close at all, that's just a function of the lack of major contest cases in WA or anywhere for that matter).

Bridges does say at the end, to the effect that Foulkes had been beating the Dems about the head all day, but it also granted them the motion to deny a revote.

[Micajah]

torridjoe,

Thanks for posting the copy of the transcript of the judge's rulings. I have been wanting to read it for quite a while (but was too cheap to try getting a copy from the court clerk).

[Torrid]

absolutely, Micajah. Please come back for Part Two, because the stuff on the revote is of course relevant to our discussions, and revealed for me what I think is additional, Constitution-based evidence preventing a 2005 election for governor.