There's more to say about Sam Reed's Dumb E-mail from an Elected Official explaining why he directed his people to lobby against HB 2526, which would have allowed citizens to challenge the redundant registrations of a multiply registered voter. Reed claimed that "It is a simple and quick administrative step to correct [the duplicate registration]. It doesn’t require a costly, time-consuming public hearing Reed also stated in his dumb e-mail that
a person doesn’t have to go through a formal Voter Registration Challenge procedure. He or she can simply let the County Auditor’s Office know.Let the auditor know. That sounds vaguely familiar. Oh, wait, that's basically what Deanron said last October after the King County GOP challenged 3,383 pairs of apparently duplicate registrations. Deanron subsequently rejected the challenges for lack of statutory authority but also claimed that:
The county is, however, using the information provided in the challenges and comparing data in the voter registration records to determine if duplications exist and to correct the records to reflect the existence of only one registration.How well did Deanron do? He did in fact purge some of the duplicates before the ensuing election. But nearly 1,000 of the duplicates challenged by the GOP four months ago still show up as duplicates in the statewide database --
Here is an updated and redacted version of the KC GOP's spreadsheet of duplicate registrants [5MB Excel file] it challenged on October 12th. I removed the voters' complete addresses and inserted extra worksheets showing the voters who still appear to be registered twice in the Feb. 1 statewide database.
The GOP challenged 3 groups of duplicate registrants.
Group 1. Exact matches for name, address and birthdate
Group 2. Females matching for first and middle names, address and birthdate, but different last names.
Group 3. Matching names and birthdates, but different addresses (including in different counties). [A small number of the Group 3 pairs may turn out to represent different people with common names who happen to have been born on the same day]
The challenge included 207 pairs in Group 1, 1851 pairs in Group 2 and 1325 pairs in Group 3, of which 300 pairs were solely within King County. By election day, there were still 87 pairs in Group 1 still registered twice, along with 804 in Group 2 and 153 of the 300 King County pairs in Group 3. 938 of the 1025 cross-county duplicates were also still registered in King County. This means that roughly 44% of the most likely duplicates were still eligible to vote twice in November even though they had been challenged.
Matching against the statewide database (which is imperfect, because it doesn't yet include the county voter ids) , I see 68 pairs in Group 1 still registered twice, along with 483 pairs in Group 2 and 424 Group 3 duplicates still registered twice. That's more than a 1/4 of the challenged duplicates still eligible to vote twice, four months after challenged. (and there are special elections this year in February, March, April and May)
King County records show that 15 of the Group 1 and 2 challenged voters were credited with voting twice in November 2004. Among these who are still doubly listed in the statewide database are: Jong Wook Jeong of Seattle, credited with voting twice in 6 different elections, Nov. 2002 through Nov. 2004 inclusive, and Lucille Fox Birdsong of Kirkland, credited with voting twice in November 2004.
Deanron's database records confirm his claim that his office eliminated roughly 9,000 duplicate registrations in 2005. That's progress. But these were the easy ones to catch and should never have been doubly registered in the first place, if his registration clerks had been directed to use the database features that help prevent duplicates. Instead, I'm told, Deanron directed them to disable those features, so few if any duplicate checks were performed before the 2004 election when it mattered most. I've now found several dozen cases of doubly registered voters who are credited with voting under both registrations in 2004. Deanron concluded his Oct. 26 press release where he announced his dismissal of the challenges of the doubly registered voters:
"Our first priority is to ensure all legally registered voters have the opportunity to make their voices heard Nov. 8 and we will not deny legitimate voters the right to vote,"The message is clear that preventing fraud and double voting is not his priority, even if it could change the outcome of an election.
It's laughable to suggest, as Reed and Deanron do, that auditors can be trusted to clean up duplicates on their own, when the record shows that they (a) are responsible for creating the duplicates to begin with, and (b) don't place a very high priority on cleaning them up. Citizen challenges are appropriate and necessary to force the issue of cleaning up the voter rolls.
Bob Bruce, who ran the King County Elections office from the 1990s until 2002 e-mailed:
If a voter is challenged, the challenged voter is always offered the opportunity to correct the situation administratively by either correcting their registration or canceling in incorrect registration before the formal challenge hearing is conducted. In my experience, many of the challenges were settled in this manner. The fact that a challenge is offered provides elections administrator a valid opportunity and the challenged voter the incentive to get the situation corrected immediately.Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 27, 2006 04:28 PM | Email ThisAs always, if the challenged voter believes that their registration is correct, or fails to correct the situation in a timely manner, he or she can simply allow the challenge to go to a hearing and be decided on its merits.
So, I too do not understand Sam Reed's response.
I can't say I believe that anymore.
Stefan, keep up the good work. I know you'd make one heckuva good state auditor.
Posted by: Jonathan Gardner on February 27, 2006 04:58 PMSounds good to me.
It sounds now like the public challenge is just an opportunity for the Canvassing Board to tell concerned citizens to go ..., well you know where I was going.
The system is definitely broken.
Posted by: huckleberry on February 27, 2006 05:00 PM
We need the upcoming initiative proposed by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation to require all interested voters to re-register to pass. Until that happens, the state voter database will continue to be full of double-registered and ineligible voters.
Posted by: Gary on February 27, 2006 05:28 PMAnd, to be fair to the long-time front line employees in Elections who were there for years prior to 2002, the experienced staff and line supervisors TOLD Bill Huennekens and Dean Logan that turning off the features on the database that allowed the data entry operators to search for duplicates and business addresses was going to cause them to mistakenly generate duplicate registrations and mistakenly register voters at business addresses.
The response from Logan and Huennekens was: "Just do it. We aren't in the business of questioning our voters."
When the staff pointed out that this wasn't questioning voters at all, but ensuring that voter registrations were processed properly, given the information provided by voters themselves, they were told, in essence, to sit down, shut up, and do as they were told or they would be sorry.
So here you have two small-town idiots hired by Ron Sims, to do Ron Sims' bidding, who gave what amounts to illegal instructions to the election staff, over their objections that it was not a good practice.
As noted in the numerous comments made by the staff to Ron Sims own Citizen Task Force last spring, both Logan and Huennekens are poor managers who cannot be counted upon to get the job done. Logan covered his butt by "demoting" Huennekens (even though he still receives the same pay.)
Logan will not listen to the voice of experience all around him. Instead, he has embarked upon a campaign to drive off those experienced long term employees - you should call the election office and ask how many long term employees has Elections lost in the past six months?
It would be interesting to find out how many employees Logan has driven off (or harrassed into their grave with untrue allegations of incompetence), when what he is trying to do is purge the office of anyone who will stand up to him.
As for Sam Reed, he will support anything Logan does, as Logan was his protege at the state office.
Posted by: Insider on February 27, 2006 05:28 PMYour statements suggest purpose. The results are suggesting that the purpose of intent was accomplished.
The Governors election and recounts suggest that the intent was successful. Clearly this should have been brought to the attention of the Judge. Whoops my mistake. We don't know how the double voters voted. Clearly it is nothing more than a KC cultural issue.
Do I detect a setup for the next Senate Race?
Will Maria Cantvotewell win another close race. Wonder what the smart money is thinking? The second or third count? And by how many votes. Stay tuned folks and await the results of the next nail bitter to be settled in December-March.
Posted by: Snuffy on February 27, 2006 05:35 PMThey are above the law.
Makes one laugh though. All of the huff and puff from Goldstein back in October regarding the challenges, and now it turns out that many of them are pretty obviously doubles.
As usual, the left is afraid of the truth.
Posted by: Jeff B. on February 27, 2006 06:14 PMIt's been a long time, so maybe I am remembering Logan's public statements incorrectly. To my recollection, he claimed to be utterly helpless under the law to do anything at all on his own, no matter how clearly the evidence showed that someone was registered improperly -- whether as a duplicate or anything else.
Posted by: Micajah on February 27, 2006 06:36 PMLogan and Hunnekins were iddiots when they were State Workers at the SOS office. They're just more effective under their evil Don Ron.
Sam Reed and the whole lot of em need to go.
Posted by: SP Fan on February 27, 2006 09:28 PMDo you have stature to file a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Claim against KCE and the SoS?
Posted by: Green Lake Mark on February 27, 2006 10:03 PMWhat are the remedies accorded the citizens when a county auditor(s) is unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibilities. They do work for the citizens. In King County, the Executive office appoints the Auditor and by default shares the responsibility of the Auditor's Office. If the King County Executive fails to take corrective measures regarding the Auditor's performance or lack thereof, then isn't the King County Executive ultimately responsible. And what remedies are accorded the people to rid themselves of the Executive. Are the charges civil or criminal or both. At what point do Federal Investigators step into the picture. Is the Federal Government ultimately responsible for fair and honest elections?
Posted by: Snuffy on February 28, 2006 08:05 AMAt this time, it will probably take a stunning legal ruling against these incompetent fools to give Logan the boot and Reed should not under any circumstances be reelected.
Posted by: KS on February 28, 2006 08:10 PMGreat Job, and if you need any assistance let me know. The more of this that gets cleaned up by 2006 the better chance we have of actually seeing the real results of our electoral voters. Not DeanRon's version of it.
Posted by: GS on March 1, 2006 12:19 AM