Bob! I said to my old friend Bob Williams of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, tell me what’s the number one argument to the courts in favor of redoing the governor election?

“Where have you been when we needed you?” he asked.

I’ve been writing about it, I said. I wrote that it doesn’t make sense for canvassing boards to decide for themselves who the voter wants for governor based on who else they voted for when the governor vote isn’t clear. I told how when Frank Keller was state Democratic chair, he told me he always voted a straight Democratic ticket except for one race he skipped because he didn’t trust the longtime Democratic incumbent. A canvassing board today would mark the skipped race D and that would be wrong.

“I’m an accountant, not a lawyer,” said Williams. “But I would have taken the case to federal court, rather than state. There is such a violation of the equal protection argument when different standards are used in different counties.”

Provisional ballots were a big problem, he said. Provisional. ballots are provided for walk-in voters who are in the wrong polling place or there is some question about their eligibility. They are not supposed to be counted until that eligibility is checked. While nationwide, 25 to 30 percent of provisional ballots are declared legitimate, in King County it was 90 percent.

“The way the law works in Washington,” said Williams, “provisional ballots are not supposed to be counted until they’ve been checked against the master file (of registered voters). Signatures are supposed to be checked but that wasn’t done for 348 voters in King County who put their ballots into counting machines before their eligibility had been verified.”

Well, I said, I’m sure not optimistic this campaign for another election is going to get any where now that Gregoire has moved into the office.

He agreed. “The longer she’s in, the harder it will be. Then we have dead people voting, felons voting. You know, Sam Reed (Secretary of State) told the Legislature in 2003 that there were significant problems in King County. Why didn’t he demand they be corrected.? The problem goes so much deeper than the Rossi election. It probably goes back to Ralph Munro (the previous Secretary of State) when the whole thrust was to get as many people to the polls as possible. Forget about whether they are legal or not.”

Ralph Munro is the guy who got the motor voter law passed, I said, where people can register to vote when they get their driver’s license. That’s been blamed for a lot of non-citizens winding up on the voter rolls.

Allowing the homeless to register as voters and use the courthouse as their address is against state law, said Williams, “but Sam Reed passed an administrative code change saying that was OK. You’re supposed to sign an oath that you’ve lived at your residence for the past 30 days but you can’t live at the King County elections office.”

I see, I said, where the new governor says everybody will get along because the issues aren’t Republican or Democrat, but people issues. Only a couple days later there’s a story in the newspapers how the Democrats are pushing legislation cutting the Building Association of Washington’s share of refunds from the state workers compensation system from 20 percent to 10 percent. That sure doesn’t sound to me like there’s going to be peace in the valley.

Nope, said Williams, there’ll be no peace in the valley.

So face it, folks. With the Democrats in charge of the executive and legislative branches of government, the war goes on in Olympia against business. I wonder where the D’s think the jobs will come from after they’ve driven more businesses out to friendlier states? But we know, don’t we? I predict the state payroll will go up 1,000 jobs a year during the Gregoire reign.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.).