[NWPT48]I’m scanning the headlines coming out of Wednesday’s testimony in the election contest trial, and curiously, I don’t see any mention of stuffed ballots or fraud. And yet… this was the day the Republicans put the two witnesses on the stand who were supposed to prove the hyperbolic allegations that Dale Foreman made in his opening arguments.
Nicole Way insisted that she did not know the mail ballot report was inaccurate at the time she produced it, undermining charges that it was “fraudulent” or even “falsified.” And the non-expert testimony of GOP operative Clark Bensen was less than convincing. He examined 11 King County precincts (out of 2600) where there were a handful more — or less — ballots counted than voters credited, and somehow concluded that this was evidence that 875 ballots were stuffed. Whatever.
Apart from Thursday’s Frye hearing on proportional deduction, Rossi’s attorneys have pretty much finished presenting evidence. And that’s basically the sum total of the fraud theory.
As they have since the very first hearing, the R’s continue to cite the Foulkes case as precedent that the election can be set aside without proving that Rossi actually received the most votes. In Foulkes, ballots had been left unsecured, and there was clear evidence that a number of ballots were fraudulently altered as a result. One could argue that King County’s inability to reconcile absentee ballots was equivalent to the unsecured ballots in Foulkes, in that it might have created an opportunity for fraud… specifically, ballot stuffing. But unlike Foulkes, the Republicans have failed to present a single scrap of evidence that fraud — in the form of ballot stuffing — actually did occur.
The only fraud to have been proven thus far at trial, was the fraudulent claim of such in the Republican’s opening argument.
