On Tuesday I reported a case of a probable double voter. In addition to reporting this on the blog, I also forwarded the information to King County Prosecutor Norman Maleng's office.
Mr. Maleng's chief-of-staff, Dan Satterberg, who also represents Maleng on the canvassing board, e-mails:
I forwarded your information to the Elections division. They have done some research that verifies your information. They will forward the case to our office for additional investigation and a criminal prosecution review. We take cases of illegal voting very seriously and we will prosecute substantiated cases under the array of statutes set forth in title 29A.84.Our thanks go to Mr. Satterberg and to his colleagues in county government who are following up on this. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 07, 2005 10:50 AM | Email This
Thank you.
Whatever happened with the prominate person who was registered at a private mail box?
Posted by: SteveB on January 7, 2005 11:03 AMI don't care if it is a senior citizen voting an absentee for their dead spouse. Double voting is FRAUD no matter how you cut it. If not jail time HUGE monetary fines!!!
Voter fraud has never been taken seriously here, and now we are seeing the results of a lax policy. Instead of just warning people with letters, people convicted of fraud should be handed out stiff highly publicized sentences.
It is only way to protect democratic process.
Book'em Dano!
Posted by: Joe on January 7, 2005 11:10 AMWe need to see some punishment so that future cheaters will be discouraged.
And yeah, Shark, what happened to the prominent person?
The more famous the person, the better off we will be in terms of preventing fraud like this in the future.
Posted by: Jeff B. on January 7, 2005 11:22 AMNEWS:
I may have found 213 invalid voters in the Thurston County voter’s list.
They are supposedly located at The Evergreen State College in Olympia. However, these voters don't appear to have residential street addresses like valid registered voters are supposed to have.
Shark, I have just sent you an email, also one to Chris Vance.
Go bust'em!
Posted by: TADD on January 7, 2005 11:38 AMA plausible road map:
1. Sometime today or over the weekend the WSRP will let their case be know to the public. It will include all the issues that have been discussed here and a few that no have discussed.
2. The WSRP will give some of the documentation to key legistrautres; those D’s they think might be persuaded to vote against certification.
3. On Monday or Tuesday (if the legisttrautre has or it is apparent that they will certify) the WSRP will file suit. They will request that the election be overturned, the inauguration be postponed by order of the court, and that new election be ordered.
4. If the suit is brought before the a R leaning judge they will get their postpone and the D’s will appeal to the State Supreme Court. No guess what will happen here.
5. What will happen in court will depend on what grounds are verifiable. From what has been admitted too by KC I would guess that the election would be overturned, but who knows.
6. If a new election if order it would take at least 6-8 weeks to get ready for it.
Posted by: Doug on January 7, 2005 11:47 AMHuennekens is one of those democrats who wants liberal registration laws, presumably to make cheating easy as possible. It sure isn't because they care about the purity of the voter rolls!
Posted by: Michele on January 7, 2005 11:51 AMIt's about time I see a reference to "illegal votes" in this blog. Illegal votes is the only relevant statutory basis for an election contest. The phrase should have been used early and often.
Posted by: Bill on January 7, 2005 11:54 AMGive them a serious, punishing fine in the thousands of dollars, but no need to throw them in jail.
Posted by: Scott in Carnation on January 7, 2005 11:57 AMYes the SC said that. But, the WSRP does not have to take the case to the SC. They can take the case to superior court like they did with the 500+ ballots in KC. That judge can issue an order to postpone the inauguration and then the D’s would appeal the SC.
Gentlemen,
I am surprised and dismayed at some of the shenannigans that have been uncovered regarding the 2004 election.
I've been shocked by the ho-hum, "we'll look into it" response from both of you. I'm also dismayed that you seem to be the last to know about these problems that were first documented in 1998. I expected that you would safeguard the process. I have higher expectations for both of you, that you might be actively looking for issues like these, instead of demanding that others bring you "proof."
I have a serious question for you...should I change my expectations, or my elections personnel?
Posted by: South County on January 7, 2005 12:14 PMDo you suppose reporters are using the same MO as the Dem operatives going door-to-door for the disenfranchised, where they asked the person who they voted for first? Only in this case the opposite occurs, where action is taken if they say GOP (i.e. list it in the paper if it's a GOP vote, leave it out if it's a Dem vote).
Secondly, the ballot of the deceased wife in Sammamish was taken out of the mailbox....husband didn't see it. There was a flood of mail thefts this Fall; reported in the Sammamish police blotter. Haven't seen many cases of late...hmmmm do you suppose there's a connection for the FBI to investigate?
Posted by: MB on January 7, 2005 12:24 PMAll I want is for EVERY vote to count. So what if it came from someone who had already voted, it's still A VOTE.
I am so glad we fought to make sure ALL of the votes count in this great state of Washington.
Posted by: just another liberal on January 7, 2005 01:58 PMBut the main purpose is to scare them: Maleng publicizes that he is going to prosecute and send those who voted fraudulently to jail for 30 days----if people don't turn themselves in first. The carrot is to offer community service or probation---and to scare them with a stick of 30 days (or more? I don't know what the penalties are)if they don't turn themselves in by, say, Wed., January 12 High Noon.
The hope would be to 1) get some publicity, reinforcing how flawed the election was, and 2) get some more affadavits that might be able to be entered into a court proceeding. Even if the scare effort succeeded in getting only 5 or 10 it would be worth it.
Posted by: Leo on January 7, 2005 08:11 PM