Last month the Democrats and their amen choir in the local newspapers savaged the Republicans for inadvertent errors in challenges against illegally registered mail box voters -- even though the Republican errors were promptly acknowledged and corrected and no legitimate voter was ever denied their right to vote.
But the same newspapers have neglected to report on the irreversible errors Dean Logan made in his handling of the challenged ballots. Had they done so, they would have revealed that Dean Logan's Elections office tabulated 41% of the challenged absentee ballots before any of the challenges were adjudicated or resicinded. Among the absentee ballots from illegally registered voters whose challenges were upheld: 31% of the illegal votes were counted. Although the unlawfully counted ballots do not appear to have changed the outcome of any race, these actions were taken before the election, when the Sims/Irons race was still too close to call --
Some of this was mentioned in a post-election canvassing board meeting, but not widely reported. I got the complete details from documents I obtained through a records request late last week (This file lists all of the challenged voters who cast ballots in the November 2005 election. Electronic records have more details of processing dates).
The timeline of handling the challenges follows. First, I remind you of Dean Logan's press release of Nov 7, 2005 "King County prepares for secure and accountable election"
King County Elections has put procedures in place to track challenged votes so they will be counted if the challenge fails and rejected if it succeeds. All challenged voters are flagged in the database. If they vote an absentee ballot, their vote is flagged upon return and set aside to be considered by the Canvassing Board at a challenge hearing to be held before the election is certified on November 29.As usual with King County Elections, the reality did not live up to the promises.
Lori Sotelo delivered her challenges to the Elections office on Wednesday, October 26th, a few days after the absentee ballots were mailed out. 23 of the challenged voters, among them 5 of those whose challenges were upheld, had already returned their ballots and these were processed on October 25th and October 26th. (I exclude these numbers when calculating the error rate, but the early processing of absentee ballots does have implications for protecting the electorate from late filed fraudulent registrations.)
The Elections office took more than a week to flag the challenged voters in the absentee ballot system. The database audit trail shows that the challenge flag wasn't applied until Nov. 3rd at 6:50pm. By this time, 104 more absentee ballots from challenged voters had already been processed through the system and irreversibly separated from the envelopes which would identify the voters. Of these 104, 10 were from voters whose challenges would later be upheld.
In all, the challenged voters returned 277 absentee ballots, 254 of which came in after the challenges were filed. Of the 59 voters whose challenges were upheld, 37 were cast by absentee, 32 of which came in after the challenges were filed. 104 of the 254 (41%) and 10 of the 32 (31%) were tabulated before the validity of the challenges were determined. This delay was attributable to (a) the complexity of mail ballot processing and (b) the Elections office's discretionary foot-dragging in managing the challenges.
On the other hand, of the 22 upheld challenged voters who voted at the polls, only 1 ballot slipped through and was unlawfully tabulated. This is still unacceptable, but it is a much lower error rate than we saw with the mail ballots. This lesson teaches us two things: (1) Even with his ridiculously lax standards for upholding the registration of a challenged voter who cannot possibly live where he claims to live, Dean Logan still does a lousy job of protecting the the electorate from illegal votes. (2) Mail-in voting allows far more illegal votes to be cast than does polling place voting.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 26, 2005 12:50 PM | Email ThisAs to the topic at hand, you are missing the point on the ballot challenges and omitting some facts that you don't like.
You blame the county for foot dragging because it took more than a week to flag the cahllenged ballots. But here's the point: you file them late and as close to the election as you did, and you will get the same results.
If you were as serious about cleaning up the voter rolls as you say, then file the challenges at a time when the can be processed. That would be now. Filing within a couple weeks of an election, and especially between the primary and the general election, is clearly an obstructionist tactic.
These poll workers are human, give them the time to do the job correctly, and they will...dump a load of BS on them at crunch time, and your load will be treated as such.
(I suppose you've never had a huge work deadline, and then had two months work dumped on you just days before the big deadline?)
As to the stats you are not reporting here...you say that KCE had an error rate on challenged ballots was over 30%...yet you leave out the fact that 97% of the voter challenges were filed in error!
You may be right, there may be cleaning up of the voter rolls necessary. But please, do it in a timely fashion. Otherwise, you leave yourself wide open to critism such as mine.
Apparently so in your view...
Posted by: MES on December 26, 2005 02:30 PMI have supported you since the Governor's mis-election but I am tired of responding to your numerous articles and that nothing is happening...
I will give you $100 to hire lawyer to get the Federals involved! Hopefully the other Republican readers will do the same.
When might that happen?
Tim
Posted by: Timman on December 26, 2005 03:28 PMTheir logic seems sound: Senator Gorton lost re-election by 3,000 votes; Dino Rossi missed the Governor’s mansion by 129, er, 133 votes. (Thanks, Esquire Tebelius! Your huge legal bill will help Senator Cantwell immensely.) If the Republicans had disenfranchised 5,000 of King County’s voters in 2000, or 500 such voters in 2004, their candidates would have won; in Rossi’s case, with the help of illegal votes from felons. (Judge Bridges’ ruling speculated that the felons, almost all of whom were men, had voted for Rossi in overwhelming numbers. Thanks again, to all persons responsible for that lawsuit!)
As your article notes, Mr. Irons was erroneously believed to have a tight race with King County Executive Sims. The Republican strategy thus abused a challenge statute in a last-minute attempt to strip voters of their franchises. Had ‘cleaning up the voter rolls’ really been the object, the Republicans would have filed their challenges BEFORE the ballots mailed; however, this would have allowed voters to register properly. Instead, the law was abused to disenfranchise voters whose registrations were honestly erroneous; not even the criminal leader, Chris Vance, claimed that any voter had intended fraud. While you claim that the Republicans simply showed gross incompetence in their self-appointed task, and you imply that a political party should not show due diligence when challenging voters (!), this claim to ineptitude does not match the evidence.
The Republicans’ dwindling minorities in both houses of the state legislature, and their twenty-year absence from the Governor’s mansion, both certainly argue for the party’s incompetence; but not even that can account for supposed adults confusing 320 Cedar Street in Seattle with 320 Cedar Avenue in Forks. They simply didn’t care, since every King County voter disenfranchised meant a 55% to 65% chance that a liberal voter would lose a franchise. Their smug refusal to make any attempt to prevent blatantly fraudulent challenges implies that they knew in advance that King County Prosecutor Maleng would not prosecute even this most obvious of felonies, swearing to have personal information of someone whose address the challenger did not even know!
We now know why Republicans hate the statue of Lenin in Fremont; with their contempt for voting rights, their disdain for court rulings, and their casual flouting of criminal laws, they have established themselves as the true heirs to his political philosophy.
Posted by: Paddy Mac on December 26, 2005 04:54 PMIF Paddy Mac, rossi too, Winston and Bartleby think that corrupted voter rolls are an advantage in a representative demaocracy, then they should have no issues if a party with an opposing view or slate of candidates utilizes that flaw to its fullest effect. Be careful what you advocate for folks, it might just put YOU into the minority.
Posted by: Just Say No on December 26, 2005 06:26 PMCare to match my $100.00? Lets get the law involved instead of just ranting and raving on this blog which seems to be a very useless exercise in 'free speech'!
Yom
Posted by: timman on December 26, 2005 07:10 PMI am no longer surprised at the incompetence of those at KCRE. Logan lost his honesty and integrity long ago, right after the Nov 04 election and his stories started contradicting each other.
Posted by: sgmmac on December 26, 2005 07:29 PMThank you for exposing the many faults of the Seattle ultralib machine. Please keep up the good work in 06.
May you and yours have a most happy Chanukkah!
Posted by: Fed Up on December 26, 2005 07:42 PMSo from a fund point a view we have $100.00...any additional takers?
Tim
Posted by: timman on December 26, 2005 08:36 PMpaddy mac says:
"We now know why Republicans hate the statue of Lenin in Fremont; with their contempt for voting rights, their disdain for court rulings, and their casual flouting of criminal laws, they have established themselves as the true heirs to his political philosophy."
First off, Lenin never stood for voting rights - idiot ! Your logic is retarded and you sound worse than the Pee-Eye editorial staff and are really talking about what the Sims/Logan cabal is apparently striving for. Conclusion: A Leftist wing-nut viewpoint enabled by the First Amendment, which the far left would fervently love to ignore at every turn.
Dean Logan appears to immuned from any illegal maneuver or f*** up that he commits with ignoring illegal votes. So, what is anyone going to do about it - besides complain ? Don't get me wrong, this is an injustice and warrants outrage, but come on - let's get a plan and do something about Republicans/Stefan - whoever. This time however, try something new - like keeping quiet about for a change so the Dems will be the ones kept guessing. I know that would require extreme discretion and sneakiness, but that would be my advice if the Republicans are ever going to gain control of any legislative body or high office in King County or in Olympia.
Posted by: KS on December 26, 2005 10:43 PMHowever, don't you know that streetfighting can be done by using the shield of truth to fight the lies and misinformation promoted by the Seattle Democrat-socialists and also by discretely choosing the battles to fight and being secretive and selectively using the truth - remember - this is war !
Posted by: KS on December 26, 2005 10:51 PMTim...
I'm just about where you are with all of this...
With as much hard work and effort that Stefan puts into exposing the fraud and corruption in King County...it's all for nothing if nothing is done to stop it! In fact - it's pure torture to see the continuous revelations of fraud by Logan, Sims and other Democrat party leaders exposed...only to see them flaunt the fact that nothing will be done about it! It's almost as if Sims and the like are using Stefan's evidence exposure for an "in your face" answer to our outrage..
I'll match your $100.00 for a true Federal Investigation.
Logan hasn't got a clue and every problem simply gets scapegoated to the huge volume of King County voters.
An error rate any bank would envy.
Keep the faith. Paddy-wack-mac is full of $hit.
Posted by: Amused by paddymac on December 27, 2005 12:29 AM