WENATCHEE – Republican Dino Rossi ended his quest for governor Monday hours after a judge rejected his contest of the election because it lacked proof that Gov. Christine Gregoire won as a result of illegal votes and bureaucratic blunders.

“I don’t make this decision lightly, and I don’t make it with bitterness or a hard feeling,” Rossi said in declaring he would not appeal the decision of Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges.

The judge, in a ruling that took nearly an hour to read, spoke with certitude that the sum of the sloppiness described in a two-week trial failed to meet legal standards required for tossing out an election result.

“Unless an election is clearly invalid, when the people have spoken their verdict should not be disturbed by the courts,” he said. “There is no evidence in this record that Ms. Gregoire received any illegal votes.”

Bridges repelled each and every allegation made by Republican Party attorneys in the trial. He said there was no evidence to “suggest fraud or intentional misconduct,” changing of ballots, stuffing of ballot boxes or efforts to “manipulate” the election.

Democratic attorneys embraced following the decision.

“I think it is pretty much a legal home run on all fronts,” Demo- cratic attorney Kevin Hamilton said immediately after the decision. “There was no fraud. He said it repeatedly. It’s going to be very difficult to overcome.”

Rossi alluded to the difficulty as the reason for his announcement.

“With today’s decision and because of the political makeup of the Washington state Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I’m ending the election contest,” he said.

“I continue to believe that mounting this election challenge and shining the light on the various problems in our election system was the right thing to do,” Rossi added.

Gregoire watched Rossi’s statement on television before heading to Tacoma to speak at a commencement ceremony and on to the airport where she was flying to Boston to attend her daughter’s law school graduation.

“She’s very pleased,” Gregoire spokeswoman Althea Cawley-Murphree said. “This will let us all move on and start dealing with the issues of importance to the state.”

Rossi’s announcement came one day shy of five months since he and seven registered voters, including Paul Elvig of Everett, filed the contest petition.

Rossi had spent $6 million trying to win the office Nov. 2 then endured three counts of the 2.8 million ballots cast in the election. Rossi lead after the first count by 261 votes. The closeness triggered an automatic recount, and Rossi led again, by 42 votes. Gregoire won the third and final tally, a hand count, by 129 votes.

In filing the contest petition Jan. 7, Rossi said he wanted to clear away the cloud of uncertainty on who won. On Monday, he said that what was missing in Bridges’ ruling was “who got the most legal votes.”

Rossi said he also took the legal tact to “get to a new vote so we can have a legitimately elected governor” and to “clean up” the election system, especially in King County.

“It doesn’t look like we will be achieving those goals today,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Elvig said he was not surprised by the judge’s decision and wouldn’t push Rossi to appeal.

“I believe it was a lawsuit that had to be filed,” he said. “I’m not surprised by the outcome. Obviously you’re asking a judge to do something very extraordinary.”

In the trial, no one disputed illegal votes were cast by felons, in the name of dead people or by people voting more than once. Also hundreds of absentee and provisional ballots were improperly counted.

Using numbers from both Republican and Democratic attorneys, Bridges concluded there were 1,678 illegal votes cast. But unless Republicans linked those votes with a candidate, so they could be subtracted from that candidate’s vote total, Bridges could not nullify the election.

“This election may not be set aside because the number of illegal or invalid votes exceeds the margin of victory, because the election contest statute requires that the petitioners must show it changed the election result,” Bridges said.

In the trial, Republicans offered a mathematical means of apportioning the ballots known as proportional deduction. Had Bridges used it, they said, Rossi would have won.

Bridges didn’t use it, even going so far as to call it flawed and not “consistent with generally accepted scientific standards.” Moreover, he said, if he did apply it to all the felons, Gregoire still would have emerged the winner.

Bridges said for a judge to “pick a number” and apply the proportional deduction method in this case “would constitute the ultimate act of judicial egotism and judicial activism which neither the voters for Mr. Rossi or Miss Gregoire should condone.”

When Bridges took the bench at 9 a.m., a nervous silence overcame the Chelan County auditorium that had been the courtroom for the two-week trial.

Reading comments written on sheets of yellow paper, he expressed frustration with widespread deficiencies in the running of elections and rebuked King County for numerous problems, blaming it in part on officials not taking responsibility.

He said he couldn’t repair the troubles of that county or the state from the bench.

“This court is not in the position to fix the deficiencies in the election process,” Bridges said. “However, the voters are in a position to demand of their legislative and executive bodies that remedial measures be taken immediately.”

Snohomish County Auditor Bob Terwilliger took Bridges’ words to heart.

“All of us learned from this experience,” he said. “All of us are reviewing our internal controls so we can track every ballot that comes through the door.”