Museum of Questionable Ballots

"Fatal Pend" provisional ballots tabulated in King County, November 2004

A "fatal pend" is a voter who had submitted an incomplete voter registration form and who is on the rolls, but not legally eligible to vote until he provides the missing information. In King County in November 2004 provisional ballots from roughly 200 "fatal pend" voters were tabulated as if valid, even though the voter had not provided the missing information prior to the certification deadline. In many cases, the voters' registration records were (improperly) modified after the fact to show that the voter was validly registered. In some of these cases, the registration records were subsequently corrected. This evidence of improper and possibly illegal vote processing was not discovered in time to be presented into evidence in the election contest trial.

Legend:

F Pend voter - name of voter. Click to view detailed log of transactions on voter registration database records.
photo - click to view photo of ballot envelope, if available
Reason - missing information that is the reason for the "fatal pend" status. "signature" means that the registration form was not signed by the voter. "address" means that neither the registration form nor the provisional ballot envelope included a valid residential address
B - envelope found in "box of horrors"
F - envelope has the words "fatal pend" written on it
J - envelope approved with initials JM
T - registration status changed from Fatal to Active in batch transaction 492552 on Jan. 6
cured? - if value is ?? there are plausible indications in transaction log that voter may have submitted valid signature prior to certification
Backed out? - date on which the registration status was changed back from Active to Fatal Pend, if applicable
Trans date - first date on which there is an indication in the transaction log that the registration status was legitimately changed to active status (e.g. submission of new registration form with valid signature).
Reason - reason for change in registration status in above transaction
Current state - registration status as of early 2006. A - active, I- inactive, C -canceled, F - fatal pend. A+voted means that the voter was not only listed as Active, but voted in a subsequent election even though there was no indication that the voter had cured the registration defect. "A+voted" with a yellow background indicates that when the voter attempted to vote by absentee, their ballot was rejected for reason "No Signature on File"(NSOF). This is apparent from the absentee ballot transaction log (click on the voter's name to see). The NSOF code would confirm that the voter never signed their registration form before the November 2004 election.

compiled by Stefan Sharkansky, Sound Politics