Secretary of State Sam Reed is continuing his P.R. offensive to hype the new statewide voter database, as in today's report by the AP's Rachel La Corte --
"Statewide voter database checking for duplicate, dead voters ".
La Corte called me to comment for the article, prompted by my concerns that the SoS office backtracked from its earlier promise to issue me a copy of the database on Jan. 3 when it was supposed to be available. Assistant Secretary of State Steve Excell explained to me over the phone and in a longer statement he posted in the comments on this blog, that everything with the database is just fine. But as Thurston County Auditor Kim Wyman says in La Corte's article
it will take some time to work out the inevitable glitchesHmm. Perhaps they're holding off on releasing the database while they're working out the "glitches".
I don't expect election departments to be immune from errors. But I do expect them to live up to their promises of "transparency" and to be candid about any errors and disclose any requested information. Sadly, the SoS office has torpedoed its own credibility by actively and tacitly participating in cover-ups of serious election problems. For example, its response to legitimate public concerns that King County counted more votes than voters in 2004 was to discredit those concerns. After I reported my preliminary findings to Sam Reed in September that King County may have counted more illegal votes from ineligible voters than earlier reported, Reed refused to look into these claims. (The initial suspicions I expressed to Reed were just the tip of the iceberg of what turned out to be hundreds of illegally counted votes from ineligible voters and double voters -- and these were among the reasons why there really were more votes than voters).
As recently as last month, 70% of surveyed state voters answered NO to the question "Are you confident that Washington has overcome the problems that hindered the 2004 Election and that there will be no problems with the 2006 Election?" Sam Reed owns that problem. If he wants to restore voter confidence, the first step he can take is to start honestly reporting any errors and glitches with state elections, and promptly release any records that are requested by the public. If on the other hand, he behaves like a software vendor who has pre-announced an unshippable product, backtracking on release dates while making evolving excuses, it's only natural for the public he has burned before to assume that he is yet again trying to sweep something under the rug.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 13, 2006 05:41 PM | Email ThisPlease accept my humble apologies. I will pay more careful attention to your posts before responding.
Posted by: ERNurse on January 13, 2006 06:17 PMI am sure now that the SoS's office is doing this to hide something and to get under your skin. The conspiracy lives. The SoS is actually a liberal plant.
Posted by: My Left Foot on January 13, 2006 06:20 PMAnd in a point of elaboration on the post you're referring to, I should note that the more of this I see (like what Stefan has posted here) the more I think Reed is a dead-man walking going into the Republican primary in '08.
His flaw is he's too quick to assume the system isn't at fault. By now he should understand that in places like where he used to be auditor, things might be ok, but in King County they are most definately not. His error therein going back to 2004 may be his downfall. As Organization Man noted, no malicious intent, but a day late and a dollar short to one of the most pressing issues facing the system he oversees.
Posted by: Eric Earling on January 13, 2006 07:29 PMThe forklift/baggage guy at Seatac a couple of weeks ago probably didn't _intend_ to cause an in-flight decompression. He was just 'Oh crap, this could mean my job' covering it up without thinking about the potential consequences.
Using one method to fill one blank on a form, and a completely separate method to fill a second blank on a form is completely obnoxious - so the though 'Hey, these are _supposed_ to add to _this_ number, why don't I subtract to fill this box' is _perfectly_ understandable. For a high school math test. But it essentially eliminates an _entire_layer_ of fraud prevention. It doesn't need to be malicious - the person doing this saved themselves a pile of work. But... that one hole adds to a second hole, and a third, until you realize you're looking at a spider web of protection. Not a bank vault.
Posted by: Al on January 13, 2006 07:34 PMSam and Steve say that de-deduped and de-deaded list should be available sometime around the end of January. I don't think this is an unreasonable time for a newly created database to be furnished.
HAVING SAID THAT, I still think Sam Reed looks like a bit of a doofus in our eyes and those of much of the public. He should strongly consider retiring at the end of his present term.
The other thing, IMHO, that Reed and Excell need to do is to run the statewide database against a Delivery Point Verification mailing program, and come up with those voters registered at mailbox places, and those registered at other commercial addresses.
Posted by: Richard Pope on January 13, 2006 07:56 PMAs I read today's newspaper article concerning the state of the new voter database - I kept thinking of ways that will be used to cheat the system. If people like Stefan, are not able to obtain this database system information - to investigate for glitches, etc.., we will never know if something as simple as a misspelled name will allow double voting across counties.
Will the database be able to pick up:
False Social security numbers?
Duplicate names with/without middle initial?
Duplicate names where full names are used in one county and first name initials are used in another county?
Will this database rely heavily on social security numbers and other specific information?
Can if pick up slightly misspelled names?
Can it pick up residence addresses zoned specifically for business?
Will it capture voter registration signatures so they can be compared on site if needed?
Sam? Do you even know the answers to these important questions?
Posted by: Deborah on January 13, 2006 07:56 PMTo a lot of people, the expectation of that phrase is that all data has been entered, all checks and tests have been run and the system is now fully operational. This is what I was expecting for Jan 1.
It sounds more like they have it sort of running, but that not all of the data verification, testing and clean up has been done yet. That, in my mind, is not "fully operational".
The SoS did not properly set the expectations and has now failed to live up to what was expected. Very poor customer service.
In December, they knew that they would not have performed some of these tasks, yet they still mislead Stefan until the last moment. Not very good customer service at all.
I woudl be curious to know what the total registration numbers (December) are for any given county and how they changed after the clean up.
Posted by: SouthernRoots on January 13, 2006 08:15 PMIf Reed needed a month to workout the duplicates after merging county databases into one large database, then he should have promised February, 1 and not January, 1.
Everyone involved with elections on the West side of state appears to be in permanent CYA mode. They know the election in 2004 exposed a lot of problems. Huennekens even admitted that "we shouldn't have counted those ballots." But rather than seek the truth and correct problems in manner that shows integrity, everyone in the elections business just keeps saying that there are no problems, or that they were minimal.
The public has read all of the hyperbole on both sides. We know that there are indeed some claims that were exaggerated. But we also know that Stefan has uncovered a lot of documented trouble in King County's handling of ballots that thas never even been acknowledged, let alone exposed to sunlight for correction.
Sam Reed, yes, you should consider retiring after this term, because I can promise you that you will lose another election if you seek the office os SOS again.
Posted by: Jeff B. on January 13, 2006 09:15 PMSouthernRoots,
That information, if reliable, would be extremely valuable on so many levels!
Especially, with our new "party designation" requirement in the primary, if they could determine which "party" had the most illegal and ineligible voters purged in the database clean up......
A large decrease in legal voter registration in the state should and could show a dramatic change in the party dynamics on a city and county level! It may also affect our population figures...Which would effect everything from Growth Management to transportation to district budgeting....etc.. The possibilities are enormous.. This could open a huge can of worms..
Interesting!
Posted by: Deborah on January 13, 2006 09:29 PMHow about a new post about something significant at this moment, like how should we (th US) deal with Iran ?
Posted by: KS on January 14, 2006 10:07 AMWith all respects to Richard Pope, they should not be given time past their self-asserted deadline of January 3d. Were they serious about their responsibilities to the public - and their management titles - they'd have put in whatever hours it takes to issue at least a draft form of database on that date.
Yes, every sniper in the state could then have mined the database for flaws. That's a feature, not a bug. Problems would have been exposed, mercilessly I hope. That's a form of discipline every State agency should face. The SOS office would then have had an explicit list of required fixes in far less time than their limited staff would turn up on government hours - and the list would include items not conceived of by said staff.
I do strongly support Mr. Pope's proposal that the SOS office run the statewide database against a Delivery Point Verification mailing program, and expose the mailbox voters and their related skulkers.