All eyes on Wenatchee, redux

Monday the trial begins in Wenatchee that will determine of the November election for governor actually resulted in the right person being elected and sworn in as governor. It is expected to last about two weeks and is the first chapter of the saga, which will most likely be settled by the state Supreme Court.

Some updates from the past week:
Republicans have been compiling a list of felons they say voted illegally and whose votes should be eliminated from totals. Coincidentally, most of their list of roughly 750 felons are residents of the eight counties (mainly populous King County) that voted strongly for now-Gov. Christine Gregoire, the Democrat candidate in 2004.

The Democrats have been doing some counter research, and have found that felons voted in a lot of the 31 counties that voted for Republican candidate Dino Rossi, even though many of these counties originally were found to be free of felon-voting. The Wenatchee World reported this week that some felons even voted in Chelan County, too. The Democrat list of felons contains 794 names, the Republicans' 946.

(Note: The numbers for each list have been updated and corrected from the initial post. -- L.)

So here's the main issue in the trial, the basket in which most of the Republican eggs of hope have been placed:
They want to use a proportional analysis technique to reduce vote counts in counties where felons voted. It's simple, really -- reduce the number of votes proportionally according to the overall precinct totals for each candidate. This means that if a county had 10 felon votes, and Gregoire had won 60 percent to Rossi's 40 percent, Gregoire would lose six votes and Rossi four.

The judge, John Bridges, has agreed to allow the R's to make their case, but he doesn't guarantee he'll buy it. Because, let's be honest here, we have no way of knowing that just because the precinct overall went according to certain percentages that the subpopulation of felons would vote according to those same percentages. There is a strong argument to be made that felons would be more likely to vote for a Republican candidate, especially since he ran against a three-term attorney general, our state's highest law enforcement officer.

I hope Bridges lets them make the case and then laughs at the ridiculousness of it all.

Meanwhile, the voting report from King County, where some shaky accounting and storage procedures have caused suspicion, is under question that it was falsified. The story is develooping. Read more from The Seattle Times here.

In other partisan election news, the state Republican Party filed a suit, which the state Democrats joined, which hopes to declare the state's new primary system unconstitutional. These two groups also had the last system declared unconstitutional, which resulted in the current system. The basic argument in both cases is that parties have a First Amendment (freedom of association/assembly) right to control whi votes in their selection process. It's an argument that makes sense to me legally but one that has little public support. That's obvious because the current top-two primary was approved by popular vote in November.

More to come, for sure.

-- Seattle, Wash.