Republicans ask high court to dismiss Democrats' suit By David Postman Seattle Times 07 December 2004 OLYMPIA ? Governor-elect Dino Rossi and the Republican Party went to the state Supreme Court today to try to stop a Democratic lawsuit they say would wreak havoc in the pending recount in the governor's race and could result "in the need for a new election." Although Rossi and his party were not named in the suit filed last week by the Democratic Party and a group of voters who say their votes were not counted, the Republicans want to intervene and ask the Supreme Court to dismiss the Democrats' case. At the center of the Democrats' lawsuit is a request that the state require all county canvassing boards to reconsider thousands of ballots that were rejected in the initial count and the machine recount that found Rossi the winner. Rossi, a real estate agent and former state senator, won the original count by 261 votes and the recount by 42. Democrats say there were mistakes made in decisions to reject ballots that should now be part of the manual recount they demanded last week. Republicans argue, as Secretary of State Sam Reed has said, that the recount should only include ballots already found to be valid. "Adopting such a radical and ad hoc change of the rules after the canvass, the initial count, and the first recount is bad law and bad policy," the Republican court filing said. "It will undermine public confidence in the election process, jeopardize passage of future school levies, and throw Washington's election system into pure chaos for this election and every close election to come." They claim what Democrats want would set "a dangerous precedent in Washington by asking the judicial branch to change the rules for an election after it has occurred." The court has not yet set a hearing on the case. Democrats have requested an emergency hearing and quick action before counties begin the recount. Republicans counter that there is no hurry. They say if the court waits until the recount is done, the issue may be moot if a clear winner is found. Democrats are relying on a portion of state law that says "the county canvassing board shall conduct a recount of all votes cast on that position." They argue that "all votes cast" includes those rejected by a canvassing board, a place that say is ripe for human error. "Common sense suggests that a hand recount should include the areas where mistake (sic) in earlier counts is most likely to have occurred," according to the Democratic lawsuit. Party attorneys claims that the subjective decisions of the three-person canvassing board "are even more likely to be infected by error than the inherent error rate in machine processing of those ballots that were counted." Republicans countered today that if all rejected ballots are reconsidered, so should ballots found to be valid by the canvassing boards because they are just as prone to error. They say Democrats want rejected ballots reconsidered because they are "obviously not impressed with their chances of prevailing in another tabulation of the twice-counted ballots."