January 03, 2005
"They're everywhere! They don't know they're dead... they keep voting!" -The 6th Sense
I've heard God can't cash out-of-state checks in Heaven, but does He send down absentee ballots?
Intrepid SoundPolitics reader Michael Nervik pulled published death notices from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for August 25th, 2004, then cross-checked the results with the King County voter database. Out of 37 names he found 4 of these that seem to have had an absentee ballot sent in for the November election. He found 4 other identical names from the obituary that voted at the polls, and/or in a different city in King county, that we haven't included here.
With the obvious proviso and caution that these could be people with identical names, it is especially suspicious when these are from the same ZIP, and voted absentee. We know of many examples of absentee ballots sent to deceased individuals' residences because the voter rolls were not updated properly. I added an asterisk beside the ones with a stronger likelihood of being a coincidentally similar name.
Here's the results:
Allen, Evelyn M. 95 y.o. of Shoreline, ZIP 98178. d. Aug. 15, 2004. Evelyn M. Allen voted absentee, from ZIP 98178.
Howard, James P. 87 y.o. of Seattle, ZIP 98126. d. Aug 17, 2004. James Phillip Howard voted absentee, from ZIP 98126.
*Peterson, Louise R. 77 y.o. of Seattle, d. Aug 16, 2004. Louise Peterson (no middle initial) voted absentee in Shoreline.
Rogers, Donald E., 71 y.o. of Seattle, d. Aug 13, 2004. Donald E. Rogers voted absentee in Auburn.
Bear in mind this is
one day, randomly chosen... what will more comprehensive searches reveal?
Posted by Brian Crouch at January 03, 2005
10:25 AM | Email This
1. Two different James P. Howard's are registered voters with zip code 98126. I'm guessing the one born in 1945 is the person who voted.
0721794962: HOWARD, JAMES P, 9027 38TH AVE SW, SEATTLE, WA 98126, born 1917
0950602163: HOWARD, JAMES P, 8136 28TH AVE SW, SEATTLE, WA 98126 born 1945
2. Thanks for looking that up. 1 down 3 to go.
3. I am very interested to see the final outcome of these kind of inquiries. I hear today that KC says they'll have the information that was requested ready by Friday (which doesn't allow much time to analyze data before Jan.12) IF dead people are voting, I think it will be extremely difficult to "reconcile" that information.
4. Donald E Rogers and Louise R Peterson of Seattle were both listed in my June 1 version of the voter database, but have since been removed.
I concur with the comment about the James P Howards. James Phillip voted, James P did not.
Evelyn M. Allen could very well be a winner! There is only one Evelyn M. Allen in the database, registered at 12054 59TH AVE S in Seattle 98178, and registered since 1944.
5. Carl,
Here is the list of 53 administrative measures that I think you were referring to. Again on the radio (KTTH) this morning, Bob Williams stressed that had these been issued in WAC many of the problems we are now dealing with would be moot.
Sam Reed failed to meet the July 2004 deadline to create the appropriate WACs and I believe is greatly at fault for this debacle.
Thanks to effwa.com for the reference.
http://www.leg.wa.gov/RCW/index.cfm?section=29A.04.611&fuseaction=section
Rose
6. Is it just me or is this sounding more and more like the movie 'Black Sheep'
All we need now is a Chris Farley type charachter to show up at the inaguration and read off all the dead people that voted for Governer -pretend gregrorie
7. Dean Logan of the King County Election Officials should be impeached or removed from office by a federal lawsuit. We (my wife and I) would contribute to that cause.
S. D. McCoy
13205 NE 55th Place
Bellevue, WA 09005-1039
425-883-0784
8. I'm on your side here Brian, but having worked with drivers license databases in several states, let me tell you that it is extremely common for there to be several people in a confined geographic area with the exact same name. Even names with unusual spellings. You've got to be very careful here before you draw any inferences or even raise the specter of any inferences. If you make accusations based on this, or even sound like you are making accusations, you run a serious risk of undermining the credibility of the whole effort.
9. What is the earliest date an absentee ballot could be cast? If it was before they died, then that could have been legit.
10. The four people mentioned in this entry all died in August, before the primary. There is no way they could have cast an absentee ballot legitimately in the general election.
11. jay bird: I see your point, and really I had some serious qualms prior to posting... but then I thought, with proper qualifications, it still serves the point of encouraging readers to peruse the database.
We also know it is absolutely true that absentee ballots were sent out to dead individuals. How many of those were fraudulently filled out? We don't know, so this kind of diligence/ vigilance is necessary.
12. That is just pitiful. Richard the First (Daley)is rolling in his grave.
13. The "expecting even more" in the following snip from Sunday's Times tells the story. There is no way possible for Gregoire to have ever won the election honestly and when you "owe" so much to so many she had no choice but prostitute the people's vote for her own greedy means.
Incompetency- yes. Corruption- a whole heck of a lot.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002138165_gregoire02m.html
OLYMPIA If Christine Gregoire can hold off a potential Republican legal challenge and take her oath as governor Jan. 12, liberal Democrats will be awaiting her thanks and expecting even more.
14. This is not at all surprising to me, as the Democrats Ideology has been dying for some time. So it just stands to reason that some of it's voters have passed away!
15. Let me pose this question: If you were a KC election official producing the "final" version of the election data, wouldn't you "make sure" that all the numbers balanced perfectly? After all, the current version is only "preliminary."
16. BUSTED!!
17. Stefan,
Keep up the excellent work -- and you are getting more fact checkers involved, which is probably the key to "winning" here.
If I recall the numbers, you have about 1,700 more ballots than voters in King County, and 303,000 voters. I think you should propose that it would only be fair to factor the results by 1.0 - (1700/303000) = 0.9944, a "fraud factor" or "incompetence factor", unless the county can rationally explain the differences.
What was the margin of victory by Gregoire in King County? 20%? If 20%, then using the "fraud factor", that means that Gregoire would lose .0056*.60*303,000 = 1018 votes, while Rossi would lose .0056*.40*303,000 = 678 votes.
That's a difference of 340 votes, which is greater than the margin of "victory" claimed by Gregoire. You can put the real numbers in here and do the math with them...
18. I probably don't need to ask, but which party were they registered with?
19. Brian, is there even a partial list of voters out there yet? I'd like to make sure the voters in my family were counted.
21. Is there a way to get Obits from the August time frame online? I would like to check out a couple of days.
22. Steve B. You can go to local library and scan Newspapers for obits. Does anyone know how many Funeral Homes are in that area. That might be a source as well.
23. Is there a list of voters for Snohomish County?
24. It appears that the Donald E. Rogers in Auburn is different from the one in Seattle. They have separate listings in the phone book (see superpages.com).
25. Zintradi, that
already occured to me, and I couldn't agree more. I think they watched that movie and started scheming.
26. The only accurate list of deceased persons in ANY area is the list of death certificates. I mention this because there are many many people whose friends/relatives don't bother posting an obituary for. So.. don't restrict your search for the names of deceased persons to the obituaries. Go directly to the list of death certificates signed by your local Coroner's Office. Just like a birth certificate, everybody GETS a death certificate whether or not their name actually makes it onto the obits page..