Gregoire wins (for now, but probably for good)

Today Judge Bridges handed down his decision in the challenge to the 2004 Washington State gubernatorial election. As many had predicted, he decided in favor of letting the election stand.

I am not a legal expert so take the following with a grain of salt. Listening to a portion of the judge's statements on the way into work (the local talk station was broadcasting it live) and reading the notes linked above, my opinion at this time is that the Republicans limited themselves in their case, and that certain issues were not presented that would have provided a more compelling reason for Judge Bridges to rule in their favor. One in particular that appears not to have been considered is that the manual recount resulted in some counties counting additional ballots that were found during the recount and which had not been counted in the previous two machine counts. Other counties did not do this. The law specifically states that a recount should count only those votes that had already been counted in the previous count. What these counties did is a recanvassing, which is when they not only count those that were previously counted but also look for, and include in the count, any additional ballots that were not previously counted. Also, since some counties did this and some did not, there was a lack of uniform standards across the state which can be considered a violation of the equal protection clause of the US Constitution. This is what formed the basis of the US Supreme Court decision in Bush v Gore after the 2000 election and, should this case rise to that level, that case may very well be used as precedent.

The next step for the Republicans is to decide whether or not to appeal the decision to the Washington State Supreme Court. Judge Bridges, in his opening remarks prior to handing down his ruling, indicated that he considered it an inevitability.