The problem of voters registering at bogus addresses seems to be more pervasive than I ever realized.
Here is a spreadsheet of King County addresses where individuals are currently registered at commercial address. There are over 5,000 such registrations on this list. More than 3,000 of these people voted in November 2004 and nearly 1,700 of them voted in November 2005. See the extended entry for more details on the spreadsheet and how to use it.
There are many more voters at bogus addresses that aren't included in the spreadsheet. For example, I just stumbled across a bunch of folks who live outside of Seattle, yet are registered and voting at Seattle law offices and police stations where they work.
Just for yucks, when I went to Ron Sims' press conference at the Columbia Center yesterday, I also looked up the people who are registered to vote at other office suites near the man ultimately responsible for the county's elections. Weirdly, there are four people registered in Ron's building, none of whom actually live in Seattle, and all of whom are registered at the law offices at which they are attorneys or clients: 2 voters pretend to live at Jonson and Jonson, PS, 1 voter pretends to live at Black, Lowe & Graham and 1 voter is erroneously registered at a different law firm (see update).
Then there are the police station voters. Several Seattle police officers, some of whom live outside of Seattle, are registered to vote at the precinct stations where they work. An SPD spokesman assures me that "absolutely nobody" actually lives at these buildings. Nevertheless, some of Seattle's not-so-finest are wrongly voting in our city elections.
About the spreadsheet -- I used a current voter database (cut on Dec. 12, 2005, including voter credits from the 2005 elections) and matched it against a recent database of commercial addresses from the King County Assessor. I weeded out as many of the plausibly residential buildings that I could readily identify --e.g. apartment buildings, mixed use buildings, mobile home parks, etc., I also took out buildings that are questionable, but could conceivably house permanent residents (e.g. motels, hotels and churches). The list also includes government buildings, which could lawfully be claimed as legal residences by the homeless. There may well be some additional bona fide residences listed, but it would entail on-site inspection to make a final determination. Which gets to my point for posting the list. Visiting voters is properly the job of the parties' precinct committee officers. The list includes the legislative districts and precinct numbers. PCOs should visit the questionable addresses in their precinct and determine whether or not people actually live there. For those that turn out to be legitimate residences, the PCO will have done their job of getting acquainted with constituents that they might not have realized were there. If a PCO satisfies herself that nobody actually lives at, say, the Chevron station, then she can do her duty and report the improperly registered voter. This is not a partisan issue. It is the responsibility for PCOs of every party to maintain the integrity of the voter rolls in their precinct.
UPDATE: I reached one of the voters who is registered at a law firm in the Columbia Center. He explained that he moved recently and intended to register at his new residence and use the law firm as his mailing address. Perhaps through his error or by election office error, the law firm was inadvertently listed as his residence. He said he did not vote in last month's election (election records confirm this) and that he would go down to the Elections office to correct the error. He appreciates that I gave him a friendly heads up so he could correst his registration. Indeed, if we assume that most non-residential voter registrations are the result of innocent error, it would behove Dean Logan to be more proactive in contacting these people, both to help legitimate voters and to deter fraudulent ones.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 21, 2005 12:32 PM | Email ThisIt never ends, does it?
Posted by: swatter on December 21, 2005 12:49 PMWhich, makes me think that the rest of us should be doing the same thing. My candidates never have a chance of winning in Seattle, so why should I waste my vote here?
Not that I will do this, but what I could do is organize a group of people that vote like I do and then as a group we should register to vote in some locality where our block of votes could make a difference to a race. Say we find that things are close on a counsel race in Kent and we have a strong preference (even perhaps interest) in having a particular candidate win. Our group could just register vote in Kent, using the courthouse as our address, and all vote for this particular candidate.
We could then throw the election in favor of our candidate, even though we don't live in Kent and had no right to vote there.
Sounds bad, but this is exactly what I think is happening in Seattle. Either explicitly or implicitly, this behavior is condoned in Seattle and King County, and it is obviously happening based on the evidence Shark keeps uncovering.
Posted by: BananaLand on December 21, 2005 01:21 PM"This is should not a partisan issue."
Posted by: fred on December 21, 2005 01:31 PMhttp://www.seattlehousing.org/Housing/programs/sshp/sshplocations.asp
Maybe you should try "Delivery Point Verification" software, which is a mailing program for nine-digit zip codes, and will tell you whether there are residential delivery addresses at a given street number.
Posted by: Richard Pope on December 21, 2005 02:30 PMSo, in the future please spare me your FRAUDULENT HAND COUNTS!!! They're scarier than a cage full of snarling rats on your head. Machine counts only, please!
Posted by: Winston Smith on December 21, 2005 02:33 PMThe 36th district has the most with 1627. 1351 of are between Office Buildings, Restaurant Table Service, Retail Stores and Storage Warehouses.
The 37th district is second with 953. 601 are registered at government buildings – which is only legal if they do not have a valid residence.
In third is the 43rd district with 737. 556 being Office Buildings, Retail Stores and Storage Warehouses.
Next is the 31st with 498. 431 being Office Buildings, Fraternal Buildings and Equipment Shops.
Office Buildings – 1380
Retail Stores – 890
Government – 643
Restaurant Table Service – 470
Storage Warehouses – 405
Equipment shops – 229
Fraternal buildings hold 150 voters
An interesting mix of residences, don’t you think? Stefan is right, the PCO’s should be out there clearing this up.
Finally you said something we can agree on. Hand recount (prone to fraud and less accurate than machine counts) is what got your governor into the mansion.
Spare me your fraudulent hand counts!
What do you have to say now?
Posted by: dan on December 21, 2005 02:43 PMI'm sure there are thousands of additional errors that will be found from Stefan's lame assumption.
Hey Stefan, why don't YOU file all these 'illegal' voter challenges? Because you know that you'll go to jail (or maybe not, with a republican prosecutor) for perjuring yourself with faulty info.
Does anyone else wonder why Stefan is "unpaid PROFESSIONAL Statistical Analyst" as even Mr. Cynical so correctly states?
exactly how are the seats in the peanut gallery? You are what is known as "all hat and no cattle." Grow a pair, or borrow someone elses and let's see if you can come up with a proactive thought, instead of a reactionary, sophomoric, or imbecillic thought.
Surely you can't be as stupid as you insist on demonstrating? Regardless, you are entertaining. Something along the lines of a monkey, a football, and downhill.
Posted by: Danny on December 21, 2005 03:08 PMYou have to speak a language Ron Sims can understand.
Just get them to enforce the car tabs collection on these voters.
It is illegal to register your car somewhere other than your primary residence, so all of these people really owe the city of Seattle a lot of money.
Posted by: Andy on December 21, 2005 03:13 PMI GUESS OUR MED'S HAVE WARN OFF, WHY DONT YOU TAKE A FEW MORE TOKES AND GO LIE DOWN AND DO YOUR OWN HAND COUNT.
Posted by: TACOMA PHLASH on December 21, 2005 03:25 PMI'd bet they'd drop this all-mail voting thing in a hurry if it happened. Probably Sam Reed would actually propose meaningful election reforms.
I'm beginning to believe that a bit of civil disobedience is in order. What other legal avenues have we not explored yet?
Posted by: Jonathan Gardner on December 21, 2005 03:51 PMOne can probably nit pick your work, just as I did above. But if you can do this in a couple hours, and I can spend a couple minutes and find some errors, why can't KC Elections do this on an annual basis, make some phone calls, and clean up the records.
And the 10 listed at Seahawks HQ probably don't want their home addresses listed and I understand that. But if they live in Redmond or Woodinville they should be voting on those city elections or those school bond and levy issues.
Again, if you can do it, why can't Dean Logan do it.
Posted by: The Doctor on December 21, 2005 04:01 PMLook at the newspapers and tv stations send off missives to Algore asking him to pull the plug on this misuse of the internet...it is only supposed to be for moveon.org and porno!
I love the loiyers breakin' the law!
Was not a federal judge just bendin' the rules a little when she was caught by the Shark?
I realize the traction of this infomation appears low but it keeps the fires burning until someone has had enough and cares to enforce the law.
I always can't figure out how the Washington State Patrol does not fire John Lovick from Mill Creek. He is a Democract in the legislature and is openingly seeing laws broken and does nothing to enforce them.
Wait they are almost all loiyers in the legislature seeing the law bereakin' and do nothing...I guess it all rings real hollow until we here at SP start voting 3 and 4 times then we'll be hunted down like the criminals they are!
Ahh the light begins to shine deeper and deeper into the system.
Folks on the dark side SP and R's are not the problem...why do you want to keep looking over your shoulder?
Posted by: Col. Hogan on December 21, 2005 04:06 PMThere's plenty of room for fraud there, though, since people can claim to live aboard when they actually have a land home elsewhere, or commute and only stay on the boat during the week, or live there seasonally. It's a fluid community.
http://www.portseattle.org/seaport/marinas/shilshole/
Posted by: starboardhelm on December 21, 2005 04:10 PMKeep those cards and letters coming, folks. Let's eliminate from the list the legitimate addresses that you know about from your own experience and focus on the bogus registrants, of which there are quite a few.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on December 21, 2005 04:15 PMMOBILE home parks will always show up only under "Commercial Building Records", because the administration office, maintenance shed, etc. tends to be the only PERMANENT building on the premises. The mobile homes themselves are assessed and pay property taxes, but show up in a different databases as personal property (as opposed to the real property database you have been using).
I would imagine that just about every single mobile home park is included in the listing, unless Stefan has manually edited them out.
Find someone with a good DPV mailing program, and run the King County voter database (even the SOS voter database for that matter), and you will have all the commercial and mailbox addresses in a fraction of a second.
Posted by: Richard Pope on December 21, 2005 04:27 PMA number of mobile home parks are identified in the first column (building description) field with words like "TRAILER", or the abbreviation "MHP". I filtered out all entries with easily identifiable labels of this type.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on December 21, 2005 04:31 PM
NoooooooooooooooooooooooooooWayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Inquiring minds want to know more about the LAUNDROMAT in FALL CITY at 4450 356TH DR SE
I did a google search on the address and came up with the following...
SPRING GLEN MH PARK 4450 356TH DR S.E. FALL CITY 425-222-6333
It looks like a moble home park. If that is the case then something may be wrong with the King County Assessors data base, which is also surprising. Very interesting.
http://www.evergreenpolitics.com/ep/2005/12/id_vote_for_vot.html
Posted by: Anon on December 22, 2005 01:21 PM