Billmon: The Bridges of Chelan County

Judge John Bridges came back yesterday with a ruling in the GOP's last-gasp suit to overthrow Washington State gubernatorial election, and his message to the party (and to would be gov Dino Rossi) can reasonably be summarized as: "Get a life."

In his ruling, Bridges said the GOP failed to make the case for any deliberate, widespread fraud. He rejected the GOP's argument that an analytical technique called "proportional deduction" showed that most of the illegal votes cast in the election went to Gregoire. He also held that even using Republicans' proposed analytical technique, Gregoire still won. (emphasis added.)

The judge found that the Republicans failed to prove that Gregoire received one illegal vote among those improperly cast. In fact, he said, the only "clear and convincing" evidence he saw was the statements of four felons who said they voted for Rossi and one who said he cast a ballot for a Libertarian candidate.

Judge Bridges then proceeded to subtract those same four votes from Rossi's total, which means the net result of the GOP's legal campaign has been to widen Gregoire's winning margin. I can hear the sound of conservative heads exploding from 3,000 miles away. I've got a feeling Judge Bridges has just been added to the right wing's list of "out of control" liberal judges -- notwithstanding the fact that local Republicans were praising his fairness just a few days ago.