Here's more on the story of the "not registered" provisional ballots that I mentioned on Thursday.
So far, after searching only a fraction of the counted provisional ballot envelopes, we've found 9 envelopes whose ballots were counted, even though somebody in the Elections office had already concluded they were not cast by registered voters and should have been rejected (photos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).
All of these envelopes have a similar profile:
1) The "not registered" checkbox in the upper right is clearly checked off
2) The voter is assigned to precinct 1823, no matter what polling place they cast their ballot at or which part of the county they claim residence in.
3) The voter does not show up in any version of the voter database that I possess (five versions created on various dates between June 2004 and June 2005). This is different from the "fatal pend" voters that I wrote about earlier, for whom there exists a record in the voter database. While some of these people can be found in, say, property tax rolls, I found no trace of them in any the voter registration records.
4) Most suspicious -- none of these envelopes appear in the list of provisional ballots that King County Elections issued to me a month ago. Nearly all of the other envelopes, both counted and uncounted, show up in the county's list. The fact that all of these were counted, but don't appear in the list, suggests that somebody might have figured out that the ballots were improperly counted and then tried to cover it up by deleting the corresponding data records.
(A 10th ballot that is similar to the others is also curious. There is a voter with the same name registered at a different address. But the Intelius database reports her to have a different birth year than the person who submitted the provisional ballot)
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at October 16, 2005 04:21 PM | Email ThisThese are the smoking guns that audits couldn't find.......
more votes than voters indeed!
Posted by: sgmmac on October 16, 2005 05:29 PMHave you seen any provisional ballot envelopes on which the upper right corner was completed to show whether the ballot was "valid" or "invalid"?
Is it the apparently normal practice of King County elections personnel to leave that area blank -- and to avoid clearly identifying the person who decided that the ballot was valid and thus included it in the vote count?
Posted by: Micajah on October 16, 2005 06:07 PMPrecinct 1823 must have been the designated Fraud precinct! That means King County elections coordinated with it's staff - a plan to send illegal and ineligible ballots through Precinct 1823 to be processed and counted...
If it were only one specific inspector sending these ballots to 1823 - that person could claim ignorance and error.. But because there were so many *separate* KC inspectors sending these ballots to 1823 ... means someone coordinated it.
There must have been a memo.....
Posted by: Deborah on October 16, 2005 07:37 PM.... and if somebody coordinated the illegal counting of provisional ballots by voters who were NOT REGISTERED, then we have a conspiracy. If there was active coordination, seems like whoever was involved in KCE could almost be indicted under the RICO Act.
And ditto the earlier comment: If counting fatal pends and votes by unregistered voters isn't fraud, what in the world is ??
Methow Ken
December 22, 2004
Precinct 1823
Crunching the data in the King Ukraine County voter registration file, I came across precinct SEA 37-1823, or simply Precinct 1823, located in downtown Seattle between Elliot Bay and I-5 near the James St. exit.
Precinct 1823 has 763 registered "Active" voters. 527 of them list as their residence address 500 4th Ave -- the King County Administration Building. 241 of these voters specifically note their apartment number as #553, which is the room number of the ... King Ukraine County Records and Elections office.
Over 300 of these alleged "voters" give 500 4th Ave. (with or without the Elections office room number) as both their residence and mailing addresses. Several of the other Elections Office residents give overseas mailing addresses, such as Anuj Rathi of Mumbai, India, Rayko Suzuki of Tokyo, Japan, and Pascal Engi of Bern, Switzerland.
Another 48 of the Precinct 1823 "voters" give as their residence address 511 3rd Ave, which appears to be some sort of private mailbox service.
And then there are the two Messrs. Harder -- Mike Harder of 509 3rd Ave. Apt. 507, who registered to vote on April 28, 2004 and Michael D. Harder of 509 3rd Ave. Apt. 507, who registered to vote on July 20, 2004. Both Messrs. Harder are flagged as permanent absentee voters. [while it is possible that this is, say, a father and son, I believe that is unlikely in this case. There is one additional voter registered at this apartment and in the same time frame. The only other apartments in this building have only one or two registered voters each. i.e. it's doubtful that any of the apartments in the building would house 3 or more adults].
465 (61%) of the Precinct 1823 voters registered during 2004 and nearly all of them "live" at 500 4th Ave. By contrast, only 13% of all of King County voters registered in 2004.
3 members of the List of 573 Magical Mystery Voters are from Precinct 1823, 2 of whom "live" at the Elections Office.
In the machine recount, Precinct 1823 gave 203 votes to Gregoire and 87 votes to Rossi, for a net Gregoire lead of 116 votes.
The only way for Christine Gregoire to win the governor's race is to carry Precinct 1823 in a landslide.
------------------------------------------------
I believe this precinct was created soley for the purpose of fraudulent voting. I'd like to know when this precinct was created......
Instead, they did nothing and relied upon the reports generated by King County Elections. Went into the trial spending $2 million for lawyer fees with a lot less evidence than they could have (and should have) had. C'est la vie ...
Posted by: Richard Pope on October 16, 2005 08:22 PMIf it was a ballot with marks on it, they threw it in the pile to be counted. It's no wonder that KCE "found" several bunches of ballots prior to certification that tipped the scales. Shame on every single one of the employees at KCE too. Aside from Joe, not one person came forward.
Logan did a great job of compartmentalizing everything that happened. Much like a Top Secret military project, everyone at KCE was on a need-to-know basis. So the people who determined that these provisionals were not valid voters in the database, were probably not the same people that went back and tabulated them into the final totals. I believe a lot of what Joe has said over the last year corroborates this theory.
The decision whether to include the ballot in the vote count isn't made by the polling place inspectors.
The green ink (pencil?) markings on the envelopes were done by personnel at the elections office during what King County probably calls the verification or validation of the ballots. (Since they didn't apparently care whether the ballots were valid or not, they ought to use some other name for that step. Perhaps they do. Any guesses?)
Having clearly marked the envelopes as containing ballots cast by people who weren't eligible to vote, the green ink/pencil wielding personnel then passed them along to somewhere -- and someone went there and got them and included them in the vote tabulation. Who?
The motive is plain enough: Gregoire would be likely to overcome Rossi's lead if enough invalid King County ballots could be included in the vote tabulation. But who did it?
Posted by: Micajah on October 16, 2005 08:51 PM
The motive is plain enough: Gregoire would be likely to overcome Rossi's lead if enough invalid King County ballots could be included in the vote tabulation. But who did it?
Good post, Micajah. Thanks. Regarding your theory of motive, how did Gregoire do in King County outside of the Seattle precincts? Did she enjoy a large enough majority, or even a majority, outside of Seattle? Also, is there any way to tell if these ballots were included in the original count, or later recounts? As has been asked by others, where is the documentation accompanying these ballots? Who did what, and when did they do it?
Posted by: huckleberry on October 16, 2005 09:19 PMMicajah,
I was referring to the initials in *green*. The same green that marked the *not registered* and the same green that designated the ballots to precinct 1823.... not the polling precinct inspectors signatures..
I see the initials of DM, CJB, CJB, DJS,CJB,CJB,DM, CJB,bn, and DJS on the 10th ballot.
So we have 4 separate initials marking these ballots as *not registered* yet designating them to precinct 1823 for process and counting..
Posted by: Deborah on October 16, 2005 09:37 PMIt is fraud and they certainly took "count every vote to a new level"
Posted by: sgmmac on October 16, 2005 09:43 PMhttp://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/003278.html
That plus what is coming out now are real eye openers.
Posted by: gs on October 16, 2005 09:56 PMWhat would we think of someone who arbitrarily, based on some out moded law, most likely put in place by white males, denied these poor folks the right to vote. That would be so Nazi like, enforcing the rules just because they are the "rules."
Enforcing the "law" gets in the way of the greater good of letting anyone who would like partake in our great democracy as many times as the like.
As long as the greater good is served a few voting irregularities are just so many broken eggs in a progressive society, as long as the right people get elected it is all good in the long run.
/sarc off
Posted by: JCM on October 16, 2005 10:08 PMYou're missing the crucial database.
You want the state of the database 15 days prior to any given election. Anyone not in it - you challenge. And you refuse to be brushed off by 'oh, they registered in person, we just haven't entered them in time.'
Because they've already been shown to be sleezing around with the registration _dates_. If one of these (uninvolved) 'last second registration' people was asked _WHEN_ did you register, the whole house of cards comes down.
Posted by: Al on October 16, 2005 10:14 PMIt would take provisional's completely out of the discretion of KCE staff. If people have to come testify to why the ballot was challenged all they have to say is that they were unsure if the person was registered or if they submitted another ballot based on the information they had in the poll book. This process ensures no one is disenfranchised. And it is public record as to why each individual case was decided valid or invalid.
The only problem would be convincing all the inspectors in the county to do this or convincing King County to do an on the record review of each provisional. But based on the newest evidence that Stefan is uncovering how can we even trust the provisional system here in this county. The provisional system IS BROKEN in King County and until the problem is actually addressed (it hasn't because we are only just being discovering the real problems 1 year later!)fixed every ballot should be a challenged ballot! Otherwise we are looking at another 2004 fiasco.
Posted by: Joe on October 16, 2005 11:04 PMIf this were a GOP stronghold doing this nonsense, this would be national news! And there would be some serious presssure on these crooks!
(Yeah, I know where the press really is and why. I just can't help myself.)
Posted by: Bostonian on October 17, 2005 08:23 AMYou are more qualified to run KCE than Dean Logan.
Posted by: pbj on October 17, 2005 09:57 AMThe whole bunch stink and need to be swept out of King County. I cannot think of a better time to hold their feet to the fire explaining how they allowed fatal Pends and unregistered voters to be counted.
Where is the Seattle Times and Seattle PI you ask? Right where they have been......Silent!
It's why I won't buy the rags
Posted by: gs on October 17, 2005 10:08 AMIt appears on the envelope immediately after "Precinct: __ Correct" and immediately before the line on which precinct "1823" or "SEA 37-1823" or "1823.823" was written by the people processing these envelopes.
Posted by: Micajah on October 17, 2005 10:21 AMIn the real world S/B means Should Be, but in Sim/Logans land, who knows.....
Posted by: Chris on October 17, 2005 10:30 AMI infer that it means "should be", as in the precinct that the voter's ballot should be counted in.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on October 17, 2005 10:50 AMOf course the MSM won't report on this. Why should they? Their candidate "won", and that's all that is important. It doesn't matter how that candidate "won", just that they "won". Once the 'Rat gets in, ask no questions, and do nothing that would endanger or otherwise bring doubt on the rule of the 'Rat.
In light of all of this evidence that Stefan has brought out, which he takes pains to indicate is basically a cursory examination of the records (how much more fraud and incompetence is out there, Lord knows), can any die-hard supporter of Fraudoire even say they have any confidence in the election being legitimate? Can any of them say they are really all that comfortable that the individual roosting there in Olympia at the present time is the true choice of the people for that position?
Posted by: Interested Observer on October 17, 2005 11:18 AMI checked Patricia Levesque with both of her birthdays and she is still registered as an absentee twice.......
Posted by: sgmmac on October 17, 2005 01:05 PMWHY can't we get a legal investigation into this?
Posted by: dl on October 17, 2005 01:09 PMJoe...can't drop provisional ballots, they are federal law.
Posted by: dl on October 17, 2005 01:22 PMNever mind that these votes have an effect on Statewide and National offices. King county elections can produce all the provisional ballots they need or want and there is no requirement for these ballots to belong to registered voters. How many? Thousands.
Law enforcement and the media have no problem with this. Perhaps it is time for the rest of the State to march on Seattle and raise national attention. The Federal Justice Department is the only hope the honest citizens of this State have.
Never mind that these votes have an effect on Statewide and National offices. King county elections can produce all the provisional ballots they need or want and there is no requirement for these ballots to belong to registered voters. How many? Thousands.
Law enforcement and the media have no problem with this. Perhaps it is time for the rest of the State to march on Seattle and raise national attention. The Federal Justice Department is the only hope the honest citizens of this State have.
KCRE should have been assessed Federal penalties as Milwaukee, WI was for their known corruption in the 2004 election. There were Federal violations as have been documented on this blog - correct me if I am mistaken, Stefan. It is too bad that McKay probably cannot be recalled, unfortunately because he was appointed.
Posted by: KS on October 18, 2005 01:06 PMGregg
Posted by: Gregg on October 19, 2005 06:59 PM