Seattle resident Betsy Conrad has been registered to vote in King County since 1986 and is a permanent absentee voter. The database shows that King County accepted her ballot in the September 14 primary, but not in the general election. Here is her story:
I received the note on my door from the Rossi campaign to let me know my vote was not going to get counted unless I do something, not sure at the time of the note. Well, received the note of course late in the day after getting home from work. I missed the deadline of 4:00 p.m. that Tuesday afternoon [Nov. 16]. First thing Wednesday morning I went to the absentee ballot office downtown and inquired as to what was wrong with my vote (as I was unaware of any problems and had been using the same signature for the last few years throughout multiple elections). The woman who "helped" me was less than forthcoming other than to say that they did not match and that one may have been printed as opposed to cursive (my current signature). She would not even show me the "incorrect" one on file. I still can't tell you if it was my maiden name, Elizabeth vs. Betsy etc... I could have shown my ID if she wanted, but she was NOT interested in helping me other than to have me sign a new card.Of course the Democratic Party and the King County machine are interested in "counting every vote" when they think it will fall their way. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 30, 2004 12:30 AM | Email ThisAfter this experience I was extremely upset. I did ask the woman at the office as to why I was not notified earlier about the inconsistency and her reply was "this time it counted" as if all the other votes did not or were simply thrown in the garbage unbeknownst to me. They later e-mailed me in reply to my follow-up questions after I had time to think things over and inquire more to let me know I was sent a letter after the primaries to let me know about my signature problem. I did not receive this letter, they cannot prove I did other than simply letting me know it was sent in the mail. I consider myself an honest and responsible person and would have taken notice of a letter regarding my absentee ballot especially in the heat of the voting season.
1.) Up until this letter may have or may not have been sent out they had set me up to assume my vote was getting counted
2.) At this time my vote has not been counted. I double checked with the King County Elections Dept. yesterday.
3.) I contacted the Rossi campaign to give them my name and number in case I can do anything to clear this situation up and get my vote counted as I thought it was going to.
4.) Double checking signatures now? I just don't get it...
I'm sure there are hundreds more tales just like this in King County -- the majority of them Democrats. In fact, I would assume the vast majority of rejected ballots came from legally registered voters.
This does raise an issue that seems to have failed to enter your debate on preventing voter fraud. Strict signature matching procedures are intended to prevent fraud, yet inevitably result in disenfranchising legal voters. There is a cost-benefit equation that I think you have ignored. The harder you make it to vote, the more you will disenfranchise and discourage legal voters... and the more unfortunate tales like Betsy Conrad's will be repeated.
I hope we agree that the key is to strike a balance between the two competing interests... even if we don't agree on the balancing point.
Posted by: David Goldstein on December 30, 2004 02:01 AM So you would agree then that the armed forces
vote should be counted.after its your crowd that
doesnt want them to.Gee and I cant imagine why.
With every passing day it grows clearer that such an occurance just isn't possible. Conducting future elections with volunteer partisans involved will be likely to lead to more of the same.
We need to:
1) require voters to register every two years and show picture ID, then show picture ID to vote.
2) keep ballots under security guard such as National Guadr until they are counted and tabulated
3) Consign the job of vote counting to private auditing firms.
I submit these suggestions knowing that democrats would fight them all because a fair and simple system is not in their best interest. Neither are democrat desires in the best interests of the State, however.
Posted by: Baynative on December 30, 2004 06:54 AMI understand the concept behind absentee ballots, but it seems like too many people are taking advantage of the privilege with no good reason. In Washington State your employer is required by law to let you away from work, with pay, for up to two hours in order to vote, if your work schedule does not allow you to get to the polls. However, since the polls are open from 7 am to 8 pm, that would hardly seem to be an issue.
As for provisional ballots, I still do not understand how these can be prevented from being fraudulent. We're in the 21st century, folks - surely we can spend a few million dollars (and save the costs of recounts and election contests in the future) by developing a better system. Why can't a voter go to any polling place in the state, enter their information, and be presented with an electronic ballot from their home precinct? Computers are NOT a Republican conspiracy - they're only there to help. And if you vote twice or more, all of your votes should be discounted.
Posted by: Larry on December 30, 2004 07:34 AM1) when registering, voters need to provide social security number.
2) registration must be completed no later than 90 days prior to any election in order to vote.
3) at the 90-day point, the state sends its database to social security administration containing at least social security number and date of registration and social security administration loads it into their nation database.
4) social security administration does two purges. First, all non-existing and dead people are removed. Second, if there are more than one registration for a give social security number anywhere in the country, only the most recent registration is kept, any others are purged
5) social security administration returns the clean databse to the state and those are the only people that can cast a ballot in the election.
6) positive identification must be presented at the polling place in order to vote in person.
7) absentee voting only allowed in situations where the individual is unable to come to the poll (i.e., will be out of town, in the military, disabled, etc.). In this case, some sort of affidavit verifying identity must be provided.
8) move entirely to electronic balloting where there is no possibility of someone having to divine voter intent.
Why not just enforce the rules we already have? If you do not fill in the bubble such that the machine can read it (read: if you don't follow the instructions), your vote does not count. Period. PERIOD! No, none, zero, zip, nada, null "devining of voter intent" or anhancing ballots that weren't marked properly. The only "enhancing" would be if the ballot was damaged such that it cannot be fed into the machine. Then, you have representatives from all affected parties present as that ballot is transferred to a new, clean one. That would be the only exception. Stray marks? Sorry, your ballot is spoiled. If you screw up your ballot, there are already provisions for correcting it.
Posted by: Scott on December 30, 2004 09:02 AMGiven the sloppy administration in King County, I would wager that hundreds of signatures were accepted that a bank would have rejected. After all, those same clerks were not even requiring signatures in some cases until this last May.
There is no escaping this problem of finding the right balance as long as we use signatures to verify absentee ballots -- which is one of the many, many reasons I want to reduce the use of absentee ballots as far as possible, without disenfranchising people.
I vote absentee because I got sick and tired of getting into the voter booth and finding there was some obscure judge or water district commissioner or fire district levy that I was to vote on and knew nothing about. Rather than cast an uninformed vote, I usually didn't vote on them. That is a form of disenfranchisement.
In todays age of computers and the Internet, I don't know why I can't get the exact ballot I am going to see in the voter booth online prior to the election. That way I can cast an informed vote.
Posted by: Scott on December 30, 2004 09:12 AMWith how easy it is to forge SS#'s and ID's, I'd be rather ticked off if some illegal down in california usurped my voting privelage by using my SS# pulled from the air.
REALLY TICKED.
Posted by: DustinJames on December 30, 2004 09:30 AMOf course, it does not occur to Goldy that there are many ways to make the election more secure, yet easier to administer. Of course King County is not interested in these methods, because their current approach has the benefit of being hard if they need it to be or easy when they want it to be.
Goldy's snide angle is precisely the reason that Republicans are so upset with Democrats in this state, and the reason why a Republican like Rossi almost won the election decisively, even in a very Blue state with a large Blue City like Seattle. Democrats like Goldy are really not interested in talking about reform that is equally fair to both parties, and more importantly, really does give us secure and accurate elections. Instead, they can only substitute arguments that this case of disenfranchiement is somehow proof that voting should be as easy as possible so that there is no possibility of anyone being discluded, even those who blatantly abuse the process. In Democratic doublespeak, this is called "balance."
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 30, 2004 09:36 AMI disagree. This particular voter was 'disenfranchised' due to sloppy administration by KC elections - not from overly strict procedures. Even with the minimal safeguards in place to prevent voter fraud, the elections office failed to properly maintain her signature record.
Posted by: Shaun on December 30, 2004 09:38 AMHow do banks do it? Or SEC controlled firms like Charles Schwab?
Surely there is a workable way to register with a picture ID and get a password that registers your votes and gives you a receipt. The lottery does it. ATMs do it. VISA, MASTERCard, AmEX and half the free world can do it instantaneously...why not elections departments?
My guess - THEY DON'T WANT TO.
My second guess - Because democrats are involved in creating the process and they are not about to allow it to become tamper proof.
No, you say? Then it's time to sue their asses off!
This is not about sloppiness in King County--it's about who the rightful Governor of the state of Washington is.
Posted by: FedUpWithThis on December 30, 2004 10:40 AMIt is a LOT harder to forge an ID and know the matching social security number in order to fraduantly vote than it is to show up as it is now where no ID is required and simply vote.
Again, I was raising a significant issue... the cost-benefit ratio between voter fraud and voter disenfranchisement/discouragement. The analogy to the financial industry has often been raised in these discussions, and I should point out that there is a substantial amount of fraud (credit card fraud, identity theft, etc) in that industry. The fact that the industry hasn't adopted more robust fraud prevention techniques is not due to the cost of the technologies... it's because the most effective measures too severely impact the consumer. If credit cards are less convenient, people will use them less, and the banks will make less money.
In evaluating election reform, a similar analysis must be made. While there are some reforms, like matching SS#'s on voter reg. forms to the SS database (which by the way, is in the process of being implemented in WA state), will have relatively little impact on legal voters, others, like Florida-style felons list purging, or limiting absentee voting, will inadvertently disenfranchise voters, or make voting so onerous as to discourage voter participation.
I think where Democrats and Republicans generally disagree on this issue, is that Democrats focus more on encouraging voter participation, and Republicans focus more on reducing fraud.
The trick is to find the proper balance between the two, and to do this, we need some scholarly studies on the prevalence and modality of voter fraud, as opposed to just relying on Jim Miller's reasoned hypotheses.
I understand that many of you here passionately believe that there is a helluva lot of voter fraud, most of it perpetrated by Democrats. But I hope you understand if I prefer to make policy decisions based on verifiable facts, rather than your innate distrust of the political opposition.
Posted by: David Goldstein on December 30, 2004 11:19 AMPrevalence and modality of voter fraud will only be uncovered and publicised by motivated investigators. And since the local left-leaning 'mainstream media' apparently have no such motivation, we have to depend on seekers for justice such as Sound Politics.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on December 30, 2004 11:36 AMThe democrats ONLY focus on voter particpation in the inner cities; meanwhile they do everything they can to keep our men and women in uniform from voting. If they truly wanted to "count every vote," they would have had ALL of the canvassing boards recanvas, not just Clown County.
Posted by: Jim on December 30, 2004 11:47 AM