The comment came after attorneys for Republican Dino Rossi and the Democratic Party supporters of Gregoire grilled the King County Elections Superintendent Bill Huennekens for some four hours.

During his testimony, Huennekens admitted that King County processed nearly 900 more absentee votes than voters they've been able to account for.

He also testified under questioning from the Democratic attorneys that he has no way to identify apparently illegal ballots cast by convicted felons, people who voted twice or people who voted for people who had died.

The Democrats asked that question because they believe Republicans must prove that illegal votes if discounted would result in a change in the outcome of the election.

Republicans believe if they can present overwhelming evidence of election problems, that should be enough to void the Nov. 2 election.

They also plan on presenting evidence later that the illegal votes were recorded in areas favorable to Christine Gregoire and will call math experts to show that resulted in diluting the vote for Rossi.

After the Tuesday session, one of Dino Rossi's attorneys, Rob Macguire, commented on the significance of the admission about extra votes.

"If there's an extra 1,155 votes that they cannot account for in a race decided by 129 votes, I think that's significant," he said.

But Paul Berendt, chair of the Washington State Democratic Party, disagreed.

"They (the Republicans) led off with this very serious allegation of fraud, and after two days of testimony there's no evidence of fraud whatsoever. They are not proving their case," Berendt said.

The first witness Wednesday is supposed to be the supervisor of absentee ballot processing in King County. Rossi's attorneys earlier accused the county of fraud in the absentee ballots. Wednesday the woman in charge will be under oath.