The first hearing in the case of Sharkansky v. Reed will be held before Judge Richard Hicks [scroll down] in Thurston County Superior Court, tomorrow, Friday, March 18, 2005.
To recap, I'm suing the Secretary of State under the Public Disclosure Act in order to obtain the birthdates of the state's registered voters so that members of the public can have a fighting chance of identifying the various kinds of illegal voters. I'd rather not spend my nights and weekends identifying illegal voters, but somebody has to, and our famous election officials are refusing to do so, saying it's the electorate's job. That's fine, but at least they can share the data that they possess, but are refusing to use, with the public so we can do the jobs that we thought we were paying them to do.
The following documents have no been filed:
1) My complaint
2) The response to my complaint by the Attorney General, in his role as attorney to the Secretary of State.
3) My reply to the Secretary of State/AG's response .
(When I say my complaint and my response, I'm just the plaintiff. The documents are, of course, the work of my attorney, Prof. Shawn Newman, Esq.)
We're part of the Friday "cattle call". The line starts at 9am. Thurston County Courthouse, 2000 Lakeridge Dr., S.W., Olympia
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 17, 2005 09:23 PM | Email ThisMooooove on ::grin::
Jim L
Posted by: Jim L on March 17, 2005 11:58 PMVoters with the same address and birthday.
Voters with the same name, different addresses, but the same birthday.
It would be easy to write a simple database query that would come up with lists like this that could useful in trying to find cases of fraud, and then made public. (oh, and maybe also birthdates of people under 18, and maybe over 110 years old as well). - of course, that would probably cause people who are commiting the fraud to wisen up, and start making it harder to find...
Of course, I could imagine that stuff like this could be reasonably explained... and I can imagine that birthdays would give other clues as well, the issue is that we want to make it very hard to commit fraud, and in cases of fraud, the penalties so severe that its not worth committing. It seems like the way the system is now, its easy to commit fraud, the system works to help the fraudsters stay hidden, and as far as I can tell, there is no penalty for voter fraud... if there wasn't a case for fraud prior to this election, won't the waylaying and stonewalling pretty much open the floodgates for fraud from now on?
Second, regarding, "...and our famous election officials are refusing to do so, saying it's the electorate's job."
I would like to remind these election officials that what they are really asking for is the formation of vigilantee committees to provide for justice that they as government officials don't feel comfortable dispensing.
This is a very very bad idea on there part. If we start calling the officials on this by asking if they want vigilantee committees formed to do their work for them, they will start to understand the consequences of what they are saying.
Posted by: Bob on March 18, 2005 08:26 AMThe birthday issue will help resolve what I've suspected all along - college students from outside King County are sometimes voting twice (once in King Co., perhaps by provisional ballot), and again in their home county (not King Co.), by absentee ballot. The people walking around college campuses with clipboards and "Kedwards" buttons, getting "new" registered voters, don't care if you're registered elsewhere, and they don't ask. They have a "don't ask don't tell" policy, and you just vote twice, and it never matters because there aren't any elections that are close enough to draw scrutiny upon their handiwork. Until now.
Turn over the birthdays and let the prosecutions begin. And let's have a fair election for Governor. I suspect this is going on in other states, but the complaints are (for some reason) in the other direction (take Ohio and Florida, for example). They're double-voting on college campuses there too, and then they complain when they lose by over 100,000 votes in Ohio. We "lose" by 129 here, and there's evidence of fraud, and now we're supposed to shut up?
Posted by: EJ on March 18, 2005 11:06 PM