Where’s the outrage?” asks State Senator Don Benton. Where is the outrage directed at Governor Gary Locke, Attorney General Christine Gregoire, big labor unions and big corporations who conspired to stop votes from being counted? Not a few hundred votes where there were questions of validity (example of hanging chads in the Florida 2000 election), but 1.6 million votes for and against Referendum 53, the ballot measure which increased unemployment insurance taxes on small businesses to pay for a tax decrease for Boeing and Wal-mart.

Locke and Gregoire didn’t like the election results – 60 percent voted to spare small businesses. So, they decided to overturn the election. Their strategy: don’t allow the Secretary of State to count the votes and certify the election. Never mind the fact that Washington State is part of the U.S.A. where votes count and election results are honored.

Locke and Gregoire are masters at ignoring the rule of law. They routinely act like petty Latin American dictators. But, this time they went too far.

Here’s what they did.

Locke met with Boeing, which at the time was backing a spending limit initiative. Boeing requested Locke’s help on R-53. Locke asked: “Why should I help you on R-53 when you’re trying to handcuff me with spending restraints?” Shortly after that meeting, the spending limit measure was abandoned, and Locke began is assault on R-53.

A few days after the election, labor unions and Boeing visited Gregoire, our Attorney General who has politicized the office so that her job no longer is administering the law but playing politics. She told visitors she’d call Locke and convince him to join the lawsuit to prevent the R-53 vote from being counted. That way, she could provide “free” legal services for Locke – in other words, she could use taxpayer’s money to prevent taxpayers from voting.

Gregoire also promised to assign her most senior attorney, the Solicitor General, to represent Locke. Since the Solicitor General’s primary duty is to argue cases before the Supreme Court, Gregoire was signaling to the Court that the Attorney General was in favor of not counting votes.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Sam Reed, as the State’s election official, wanted to certify the election. Gregoire assured the labor unions she’d handle the Secretary of State by providing him with a junior attorney who would say what she told him to say.

The fix was in.

Locke sued to stop the votes from being counted and certified. There was no legal justification for what he did. No precedent. No other governor ever had tried to over-turn an election.

Locke was represented by the Solicitor General. The Secretary of State was the defendant in the case. He was represented by a demoralized attorney, who said (I’m not making this up) there was little difference between the Governor’s position and the Secretary of State’s. This was so embarrassing that the Secretary of State publicly kicked the attorney off the case in the courtroom.

Fortunately, a small band of rebels responded to Locke, Gregoire and the others. (Since Locke acts like a Latin American dictator, it’s only appropriate there are some rebels fighting back.) The rebels, led by BIAW and including 22 brave legislators, argued in Court that votes do count and elections do matter.

The Supreme Court agreed and ruled that the R-53 vote be certified. So, two months after an election, the votes were finally counted. The Court ruling proves again that the only institution left in Washington State, which still believes in the rule of law, is the Court.

Small business owners won’t have their taxes raised. Boeing won’t receive a tax break. Locke and Gregoire are smart enough to know they could be subject to federal sanctions for civil rights violations so they’re undoubtedly shredding documents and deleting e-mails and forgetting events (“What meeting? We have no record of meeting with labor unions about R-53.”)

Where’s the outrage when government power is used to overturn an election?.