Posted on 02/03/2006 2:36:56 PM PST by new yorker 77
An initial check of a statewide voter-registration database found at least 5,224 dead people registered to vote in Washington and more than 3,000 voters registered twice.
So far, Secretary of State Sam Reed's office hasn't found anyone who voted illegally. But it's still investigating an additional 35,000 names that a computer flagged as suspicious.
The database of all 3.8 million active and inactive Washington voters was released Wednesday. The database creation brings the state into compliance with the 2002 Federal Help America Vote Act. It's also something elections offices around the state "have been waiting for," said King County elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan.
Elections departments, especially in King County, have been under fire for making mistakes in elections. The state political parties examined voting records after the close 2004 governor's election and found thousands of mistakes, including people voting twice, people registered to vote numerous times and felons voting illegally.
"How can people trust the elections system in Washington state ... when there is room for such gross error and fraud?" the Republican Party said in a statement. A spokesman for the party said that while the data released Wednesday didn't show error or fraud, the party would "follow up," because having mistakes on the voter rolls leaves room for fraud.
The spokesman, Brad Harwood, said the new database is "a step in the right direction."
State Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz said the new numbers show that the system is working.
"I think what's been troubling about this whole experience is that the Republicans have been trying to challenge our entire democracy by casting doubt on our entire system," he said.
The Secretary of State's Office now will go through the list searching for felons who haven't had their voting rights restored. A Seattle Times investigation last spring found the state law that prohibits felons from voting without getting their rights restored by a judge has not been regularly enforced. The number of felons voting illegally became a major issue in a lawsuit over the 2004 gubernatorial race.
The secretary of state used a federal database to find voters who had died. Counties had only used in-state data to clean out their voter rolls. Now his office will do the same check once a month. Once a quarter, the staff will check for felons — a more complicated task.
After the governor's election, most counties did a thorough cleaning of their lists, said assistant secretary of state Steve Excell. King County merged more than 18,000 duplicate registrations and removed nearly 9,000 deceased people from the voter rolls.
Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
The dead need to be able to vote! It should be a right.
Just so long as they vote Democrat.
How come no remarks from the State Republican Party Chairman??
It sure helped them to steal an election.
Send them dead ballots from the previous election.
He just quit, LOL!
The fraud was in leaving their rolls in this mess for as long as they did.
-PJ
I can guess.
Sounds like Memphis
Ah yes, as usual no indication how all those dead and double voters are registered.
Must all be "independent" /sarc
Since I'm not allowed to vote ie deportable offense for LAW ABIDING immigrant aliens, I had to phone the local county to make sure no one voted in my or my wife's name... Different breed of people near the coast...
They're all democrats, so it's okay.
Probably because in Washington it's legal for the dead to vote.
BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!
GINO Gregoire's new campaign slogan:
VOTE EARLY-VOTE OFTEN!
Well...17 people walked into a St. Louis polling place and cast 33 ballots in 2004. 'twould be interesting to count the number of voters vs. number of votes in Seattle.
There is so much corruption in this state that there are also Republicans who will be 'found out' when it gets exposed in the very near future.
When you only lose by 129 votes, 5,224 is quite a big number...
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