Add this to the list of King County voter irregularities. Hundreds of "Seattle voters" list as their residence address various private mailbox services and storage rental facilities.
This would seem to be inconsistent with the state's legal definition of residence for voting purposes.
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State's office seemed surprised to learn about the large number of mailbox and storage locker registrations. She initially suggested the explanation that these are mailing addresses. They are not. All of these voters are precincted at such addresses, and many have alternate mailing addresses, some of which are in other states and countries. She referred me to King County Elections for an explanation. The person I reached at King County is off on holiday today and promised to give me a more comprehensive answer tomorrow. In the meantime he said that it's "complicated" and that the county "doesn't have a list of all of the private mail services". I interpret that to mean that they recognize this to be a problem, but don't have a good way of dealing with it. I promise to follow up with him tomorrow and get some more information on this.
The existence of hundreds of registered voters at non-residential addresses is an obvious security hole, and the lack of procedures to prevent such registrations is an open invitation to commit fraud. When a voter is registered at a real address, her neighbors and others can verify for themselves whether that person is a live human being who is eligible to vote. When people are registered at private mailbox services, who knows who these people are, whether or not they even pick-up their mail there, whether they're eligible and competent, or if they even exist?
Indeed, I've already found some seriously suspicious cases, such as where three or more people share the same mailbox, are all registered as permanent absentee voters and have unusual coincidences in names and voting history.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 27, 2004 12:20 PM | Email ThisWe're counting on Sound Politics to lead the charge and find the truth!
Posted by: megs on December 27, 2004 01:05 PMThe next time you call them or they call you, Stefan, tell them you're going to record the call then do so... that'd make great audioblogging plus it would wind up on the talk show circuit.
Posted by: Bleeding heart conservative on December 27, 2004 01:16 PMWhy don't you start posting these lists? A data printout of all the information on Precinct 1823 and a data printout of all the information on the mailbox and storage registration addresses. Preferably in Excel format.
This is worse than Precinct 1823. The law allows people without a permanent residence address to use the address of the nearest government building to their hangout for voter registration purposes. (Conceivably, someone in India born here 20 years ago when their father was in grad school at the UW might end up with the elections office as a "residence" address, if they don't know exactly where their parents were living back then. Such a citizen *does* have the right to vote, and I am sure *some* of them vote GOP. Homeless people are less inclined to vote GOP, unless they confuse *Carlo Rossi* with *Dino Rossi*.)
It doesn't allow people to use a mailbox service as their "residence" address for this purpose. People would either have to use their real address, if they had (or previously had, for people in military and abroad) a permanent address, or a government building address otherwise.
One interesting thought -- how many of these mailbox and storage voters are really residents of Seattle, who don't want to pay the monorail tax? One clue might be if there are a disproportionate number of "voters" residing at mailbox places in Shoreline and Lake Forest Park, the closest places to the north end of Seattle, where there are the most owners of more expensive cars in the city.
(I am sure that, while Rossi did better in north Seattle, than in the city as a whole, that he still got beat by a good bit better than 2 to 1 in the precincts north of the Ship Canal, and probably outpolled Gregoire in considerably less than 10% of those same precincts.)
Also, how do the registration dates compare on these voters, with the general
Posted by: Richard Pope on December 27, 2004 01:20 PMKeep up the good work.
eric from atlanta
Posted by: eric on December 27, 2004 01:21 PMIf democrats would get as upset about this as they do about corporate 'irregularities', maybe we'd be able to take Ds more seriously.
Posted by: Michele on December 27, 2004 01:48 PMThank you for taking the time to do this.
I'd like to echo the comments others have made about posting as much information as you can so that we can help, even if it's only to make a telephone call or send an email.
I believe we need to do what we can to hold people accountable to the letter of the law. This stuff about people being registered with their residence at the Board of Elections just burns me up.
The example of two similiarly named individuals
at the same box almost certainly means that
intentional voting fraud occured. The culprit
almost certainly cast a legal vote from his
home address. He would have no reason not to do
so.
The holder of the private mailbox almost certainly
would have signed a contract. Subpeona the
contract. If the name on contract is a voter,
prosecute!
The instant he is seen doing the "perp walk" on
local TV, every single fraudulent Democratic
voter, every illegal alien that voted, and every
person who voted in two states will want the
election contest to end immediately! And that
is not to mention corrupt Democrats in other
states who would have a vested interest in
avoiding a national scandal.
Democrats everywhere will be planning an exit
strategy. They'll call for a new election, and
attempt to divert attention from willful fraud
to "sloppy" oversight by KC and others.
Dino Rossi should, and must, reject all calls for
a new election. Calling for a new election allows
the Democrats to claim the election is merely
in "doubt" when the underlying facts are that
Dino Rossi won the election, but had it stolen
from him.
Dino must insist that a 1) the election be made
lawful [especially regarding the handling of
military ballots, and the rejection of fraudulent
votes]; and 2) a fair, objective, impartial and
uniform tally of those lawful votes decide the
winner.
How many write-in votes would Jose Cuervo get, I wonder?
Posted by: South County on December 27, 2004 03:44 PMIt seems that challenges of voter registrations may have an effect only in future elections; but, even then, the challenge process is flawed. Note the last sentence in RCW 29A.08.830(1):
RCW 29A.08.830
Affidavit -- Administration, notice of challenge.
(1) Any registered voter may request that the registration of another voter be canceled if he or she believes that the voter does not meet the requirements of Article VI, section 1 of the state Constitution or that voter no longer maintains a legal voting residence at the address shown on his or her registration record. The challenger shall file with the county auditor a signed affidavit subject to the penalties of perjury, to the effect that to his or her personal knowledge and belief another registered voter does not actually reside at the address as given on his or her registration record or is otherwise not a qualified voter and that the voter in question is not protected by the provisions of Article VI, section 4, of the Constitution of the state of Washington. The person filing the challenge must furnish the address at which the challenged voter actually resides.
You could probably prove with ease that no one lives in a mailbox or property storage facility, but how would you know where a challenged voter is actually living?
Perhaps that last sentence needs to be repealed by the legislature -- so that some burden falls on the challenged voter. Once notified that everyone can tell he isn't living at a private mail delivery service's mailbox, the challenged voter ought to be the one to indicate where he actually lives.
"Hide and seek" was fun when I was a boy, but playing hide and seek with voters who aren't living where their voter registration records say they are would be no fun at all.
A person shouldn't be denied the right to vote simply because they gave an incorrect address. There could be lots of reasons for that, and the address itself does not affect the inherent right to vote. But if the registration address is successfully challenged, the burden should be upon the registered voter, and not the challenger, to provide the address at which the voter actually lives.
Otherwise, it is a tremendous invitation to fraud. If the alleged voter is a totally fictitious person, then it would be impossible to prove where that non-existent person actually lives.
Maybe such a challenge would be successful if you could prove that the alleged person doesn't in fact exist. But it would be far easier to prove that the alleged person doesn't reside at the claimed address, than to prove their non-existence. And if the challenged person really exists, then it should be no problem for them to provide another (hopefully valid) residence address.
Posted by: Richard Pope on December 27, 2004 04:22 PMManco: You said WA rejected CONS. Well, they seemed to love Rob McKenna quite a bit! Debra Senn was kicked to the curb. And Dino was ahead before they started doctoring ballots with whiteout and markers, and trying to change Rossi votes into Gregoire votes. (observers reported seeing that, yes)
Posted by: Michele on December 28, 2004 12:58 AMIf election reform gets bottled up, it will be because RATs apply the cap. That would undoubtedly be a campaign issue next election.
Posted by: South County on December 28, 2004 08:52 AM