This voter's registration record indicates that she did not sign her registration form last fall. She was not eligible to vote last November.
Her provisional ballot envelope was correctly marked "fatal pending", but it was unlawfully counted. Her registration record was unlawfully activated. It appears that somebody was well aware that this ballot should not have been counted and that this voter should not have been registered. On Jan. 11, IT staffer Travis Elsom (appropriately, I believe) changed the registration status from "active" back to "fatal pend". The voter eventually cured the missing signature by submitting a new form in August. I found another voter in similar circumstances whose registration Elsom also changed back to "fatal pend" on Jan. 11. (Elsom still works for KC Elections and declined an opportunity to respond).
Ron Sims told a reader in the Seattle Times chat today that
We have found human error [in the election] but never fraud.I'm willing to believe that some of the inappropriately counted ballots were counted because of innocent error. But what Elsom's changes to the database confirm anecdotal reports that elections officials knew that these ballots were inappropriately counted and that some officials were conscientious enough to repair some of the damage by inactivating some of the unlawfully activated registrations
The improperly counted ballot "errors", if you prefer to call them that, which were well-known within the Elections office, became organized fraud for the purpose of influencing the outcome of the election when they were actively concealed from the public and from the litigants in the election contest.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at November 01, 2005 03:22 PM | Email ThisI just cannot believe the ineptness of this group of politicians. It is the one issue that would sink Sims for good and they haven't aggressively attacked him on this issue with facts like those posted here.
Pretty discouraging...........
Posted by: jaybo on November 1, 2005 03:43 PM"Julie, go in there and count any provisional ballot you can find, I don't care what the status was, just count them all."
Posted by: Jeff B. on November 1, 2005 04:56 PMNote especially lines 24 and 30 on page 5 of the pdf file. On January 6, the "last transaction date" was changed to Dec. 29, 2004. Apparently through some method that bypassed the software's ordinary function, line 30 shows that this purported "last transaction date" was entered without identifying the person who did it or stating the time of day it was done. Was Dec. 29, 2004, put in by Mr. Elsom on January 6, 2005, as it appears? Apparently, the "VNC" was noted as something needed in this voter's case on Dec. 29, but that notation in the record didn't get put in until 3:25 PM on January 6.
Note also that, once the January 7th list of voters who participated in the general election had been prepared and released to the public, Mr. Elsom went back to this voter's registration record and changed it on January 11--to take the voter off the active rolls because of the absence of a signed voter registration application.
Why would anyone honestly go through those steps to put the voter into the list of voters credited with casting a general election ballot and then remove the voter once the public had received the falsified list of voters on Jan. 7?
Posted by: Micajah on November 1, 2005 05:10 PMRemember - for some *yet* unexplained reason, the other counties staggered their vote tallies every day so King County couldn't get a fix on how many votes were needed to put their party candidates into the lead....
I keep thinking...There had to be absolute chaos going on in the KC elections office during the daily vote tallies....They had to be crunching numbers on hyper-speed to make up what their candidates needed to be ahead in the counts. I wonder if this manipulation can be found in some sort of daily transaction logs?
Posted by: Deborah on November 1, 2005 07:36 PMI still think they should all report at once.
Posted by: Misty on November 1, 2005 10:22 PMMisty,
Last November was the first time I have ever witnessed the staggered county ballot totals. I don't know who coordinated it - but it was timed perfectly! (at least for the first machine count)
Usually, King County tries to come in with it's total *last* each day...claiming they have so many ballots to count that it requires more time... yada yada.... This is when they take the opportunity to estimate where their candidates are in the state ballot counts - and they can adjust their totals accordingly... Last year, the other 38 counties were never on the schedule they predicted and King County had to wait and wait and wait to get a fix on how many ballots to stuff in the box.... I believe it was this staggering of ballots by the other counties that caused King County's mysterious and constant *ballot finds* that put them close enough for a recount....