The Seattle Times website has now posted a nifty tool where you can look up King County voters in their database and it's supposed to tell you if and how they voted. [It appears to be based on the same county datafile that I obtained yesterday]
Problem: The Times database is incomplete and somewhat misleading.
Most of its data seems to be correct. For example, you can look up "Sharkansky" and it will correctly tell you that I live in Seattle 98103 and that I voted at my polling place. They even spell "Stefan" correctly.
BUT, "most" is only good enough for horseshoes, hand grenades and the King County elections office. It's not good enough for a newspaper which is attempting to tell you what the King County elections office did to your ballot.
It completely ignores the nearly 170,000 "Inactive" status voters, most of whom have genuinely dropped out of the voter universe for one reason or another. But inactive voters are not the same as cancelled voters and they're still eligible to vote. Indeed, 3,220 of KC's Inactive voters cast valid ballots this election. Unfortunately, if you look up any Inactive voter in the Seattle Times database, it will tell you that the voter is "not found", even if their ballot was counted.
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Oops, moments after I posted my initial version of this post I had a brainwave to delve deeper on a point of fact and I now retract some statements that were posted here for a couple of minutes. My error. If you're reading this post for the first time, "never mind"
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 30, 2004 11:16 PM | Email ThisI guess you only get assigned to inactive status based upon address changes or other reasons why your mail doesn't get delivered to you at your old address anymore. And you should remain that way until two ensuing federal general elections lapse without your voting.
Presumably, inactive status voters should NOT be voting by absentee. Under RCW 29A.08.625, this voting should be done by regular polling ballot, with certain exceptions for provisional ballots if the registration was cancelled (and to be counted only if the cancellation was in error).
Shark, make sure that none of the inactive voters cast their votes by absentee ballots.
Also, see if your files contain the date they were placed on inactive status. If no voting is done and no correction of the inactive status is done by the time two federal general elections pass, then RCW 29A.08.630 mandates that the voter's registration be cancelled.
So if any voter was placed on inactive status in October 2000 or earlier, then two federal elections (November 2000, November 2002) would have already passed, and their registration should have been cancelled, and not allowed to vote this time.
So if any voters were placed on inactive status in October 2000 or earlier, but still were allowed to vote in this election, then that is a serious error on the part of King County Elections.
Also check the inactive voters (who voted) against the June 2004 registration file. If they are not in the June 2004 registration file, that means their registration had been cancelled. If they cast a provisional ballot, and KC Elections somehow determined their cancellation was in error, each one of these circumstances needs to be carefully investigated.
There is a good possibility that provisional ballots cast by cancelled voters were counted in error by sympathetic KC Elections staff, who simply reversed the cancellation, even though it was perfectly legitimate.
Posted by: Richard Pope on December 30, 2004 11:48 PMPolling place provisionals: 3,214
Polling place regular: 1
Absentee: 5
Total Accepted: 3,220
Rejected: 161
Maybe the five absentee voters were people who actually went to the elections office in person (or perhaps made a telephone or letter request) to get the absentee ballot. Presumably, they were not mailed these ballots as part of the permanent absentee mailing.
RCW 29A.08.625
Voting by inactive or canceled voters.
(1) A voter whose registration has been made inactive under this chapter and who offers to vote at an ensuing election before two federal elections have been held must be allowed to vote a regular ballot and the voter's registration restored to active status.
(2) A voter whose registration has been properly canceled under this chapter shall vote a provisional ballot. The voter shall mark the provisional ballot in secrecy, the ballot placed in a security envelope, the security envelope placed in a provisional ballot envelope, and the reasons for the use of the provisional ballot noted.
(3) Upon receipt of such a voted provisional ballot the auditor shall investigate the circumstances surrounding the original cancellation. If he or she determines that the cancellation was in error, the voter's registration must be immediately reinstated, and the voter's provisional ballot must be counted. If the original cancellation was not in error, the voter must be afforded the opportunity to reregister at his or her correct address, and the voter's provisional ballot must not be counted.
Posted by: Richard Pope on December 31, 2004 12:13 AMI'm not sure therefore that "inactive" status would be relevant.
Posted by: DeadWood on December 31, 2004 12:27 AMIt's an appropriate phrase for how King County handled this election! And it is especially appropriate for how King County handled our military absentee ballots!
Is there a way to check voting totals in precincts that are in military neighborhoods? I'd love to know if there were any obvious signs of disenfranchisement in those areas....
Posted by: Deborah on December 31, 2004 05:09 PM