SoundPolitics this AM: For Years, The King County Elections Office Has Routinely Violated State Law
December 21, 2004
Lornet Turnbull and David Postman get the biggest scoop yet in King County's increasingly bizarre election story.
King County election workers were told as early as May that if an absentee ballot came in without a matching signature on file they were required to make a concerted effort to verify that the vote was valid.
Before a special election in May, King County election workers routinely violated state law by counting such ballots without making any attempt to verify the signatures.
But I am not sure Turnbull and Postman realize the implications of their scoop, because they turn immediately from their discovery to how it led to the 735 disputed ballots that King County "found" after the official count. And from that they go to a routine discussion of the re-recount of the governor's race.
It is natural for reporters to look forward, but, in doing so, Turnbull and Postman missed something big. If the King County elections office was routinely counting votes for which they had no signatures, they must have been, for years, counting illegal votes. The reporters do not say how long the office had been failing to check signatures, but I think it fair to guess, given the many problems at the office, that they have been violating state law for some time. If so, EVERY CLOSE ELECTION IN KING COUNTY AND WASHINGTON STATE IN RECENT YEARS IS SUSPECT. And maybe for many more years. We won't know how long King County has been violating state law until there is an investigation, preferably one with subpoena power. Elections won narrowly by Democrats are especially suspect, since King County is predominately Democratic.
Suspect elections would include the 2000 Gorton-Cantwell Senate race, the 2002 win for the Seattle monorail, and probably a number of state legislative races. (At the beginning of next year, I'll be looking for legislative races where the failure to check these signatures may have made a difference. If you have any tips for races to look at, let me know.)
We know from an earlier article in the Seattle Times, which I discussed here, that many absentee ballots do have invalid signatures. This year King County disqualified 2828 ballots for that very reason — and I hope you will understand if I say that I suspect that they could have disqualified many more.
So far, the reaction to this revelation of law breaking by election officials has been muted. I did not see a follow up story in the Seattle Times this morning, and neither the Times nor the Seattle PI has an editorial on this remarkable story. I haven't seen anyone call for the officials who were breaking the law to be prosecuted, dismissed, reprimanded, or even given a cold cup of coffee. As far as I know, King County executive Ron Sims has said nothing about this systematic violation of state law by his employees.
I plan to work to change that reaction, so this violation of state law by public employees gets the attention it deserves. I hope those of you who live in this state will join me in that effort. And I think we should consider fairly extreme measures; for example, if the law allows it, we should consider beginning a recall campaign for Ron Sims, if he does not make an effort to investigate and discipline those responsible. I doubt very much that such a recall would succeed, but I think it might get his attention.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
Posted by Jim Miller at 07:59 AM
Chernobyl
I spent a good part of Monday afternoon at the King Ukraine County Records and Elections, which is the electoral equivalent of a Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
* I first stopped by the Records and Election office [photo], in order to pick up a copy of the latest voter registration file. I'll mention a few of the fascinating things I learned from the voter registration file in a later post. The counter clerk handed me the CD without presenting me with the form she was supposed to make me sign to agree not to use the voter information for commercial purposes. It almost makes you wonder if they also accept voter registration cards from people who didn't sign their card. Oh, wait...
* The lobby wall at the elections office displays a large sign with the "King County Elections Mission Statement" [photo] My favorite line item: "We act proactively by planning ahead and avoiding unnecessary crisis management"
* I then put on my Ukrainian fur hat, grabbed a bottle of 150 proof wodka and rode my cossack steed down to the steppes of Tukwila to observe the recount [photo 1 , photo 2]
* The manual recounting of the ballots is probably reasonably accurate and not the biggest cause for concern here. Every precinct box of ballots is counted by both a Republican and Democrat, who have to agree with each other and with either one of the earlier machine counts or they hand the box to a new group who has to agree with either one of the machine counts or a previous manual count. There's still an opportunity for error and/or cheating, but I think it would be difficult to pull off. Nothing unusual happened at the tables that I was observing. They were merely recounting previously counted boxes and the numbers seemed to reconcile. All of the weird ballots had already been kicked out to the canvassing board.
* The real concern with the manual recount is that they've kept changing the rules to ensure that more ballots get kicked out to the canvassing board for review. The canvassing board consists of 2 Democrats and 1 Republican who consult a haruspex to divine voter intent in creative ways, such as counting a write-in vote for "Christine Rossi" as a legitimate vote for Christine Non-Rossi. The canvassing board then votes along party lines whether to accept the haruspex' recommendation.
* There is a real risk that the partisan canvassing board could invent enough Christine Rossi-style votes to steal the election. In case they don't, there is still the real risk that the Supreme Court could permit King Ukraine County to count enough of the Donald Duck votes for which signatures don't exist, that they could steal the election. Check in later today for my post where I share some of the fascinating things I learned by cross-referencing the list of the 573 magical mystery voters against the voter registration file.
* Among the people paid to count ballots were several women with big hair, nearly all of them Republicans, and several men with big hair, nearly of them Democrats. The one notable exception was the man wearing a ponytail and kilt who happened to be a Republican.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at 01:42 AM | Comments (5)
Categories: 2004 Governor's Race |
