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GOP releases illegal vote list; Rossi supporters accused of trickery
Attorneys representing Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi have released the names of over 1,000 people alleged to have voted illegally in the November, 2004 election. The list includes felons, double-votes, and dead people recorded as voting, and forms the core of the GOP's challenge to overturn the election that raised Democrat Christine Gregoire to the governor's mansion.
A check by The Seattle Times of 32 of the 1,135 names on the list found one case that appeared to be in error, and one that was unclear. The others appeared to be properly included on the list.
Searching for felon voters is complicated because of the cumbersome process of determining whether someone's voting rights have been restored and the difficulty in tracking a case to make sure felony charges were not later dropped or reduced. Records kept on computer by the courts and government agencies sometimes have gaps in them that make it difficult to say for sure what happened in a particular case.
Attorneys for the state Democratic Party said they hadn't had a chance to look at the material yesterday. But David McDonald, the party's chief counsel, said the names will be checked carefully before a trial in the case.
Republicans have been searching for felon voters since soon after the Nov. 2 election. Some of the work was done by the Building Industry Association of Washington, the home-builders group that is a strong backer of Rossi's.
Republicans were able to subpoena the Washington State Patrol's criminal database and the statewide voters list kept by the Secretary of State's Office. Names that showed up on both of those lists were then checked in court files ....
.... McDonald said research on the votes alleged to have been cast under the names of dead people showed many errors. "I think we're going to find that most of this is business as usual. They've done a good job of press releases and superficial checking but not of doing their homework," McDonald said.
Harry Korrell, Rossi's chief attorney, said earlier he was "99.999 percent confident" that the list of felons was accurate.
SeattleTimes.com
The list is already generating controversy: the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) is taking some flak right now for allegedly deceiving people as part of its effort to support Rossi's cause:
A "Home Ownership Survey" sent to hundreds of King County residents, along with a $10 check as an incentive for returning it, wasn't really designed, as it claimed, to help project housing trends in the Puget Sound region.
The three-question survey and the check are part of a plan by backers of former Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi to search for fraudulent votes cast in the disputed November election.
The surveys were sent to more than 400 voters whose absentee ballots were questioned after the election and who signed post-election affidavits to ensure their ballots were counted.
The Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) sent the mail in January and February in the hope that the surveys would be signed and the checks endorsed. That would give the builders group signatures to match against the affidavits, which were collected by Democratic volunteers and helped Democrat Christine Gregoire win the election.
Postman, SeattleTimes.com
The
Seattle Times has spoken with a few voters involved in the controversy. One Seattle voter explained, "If someone is giving me ten bucks, I'm taking it":
Pasette, a retired physician, used far different signatures on his voter affidavit and the check. When he signs checks, he said, he writes more legibly and spells out his first and last name. On the affidavit he used a more stylized signature, with his first initial, last name and a giant loop around it all.
Yesterday, he paused for a moment as he was moving in to his new Madison Park home and signed both his signatures again as a demonstration.
Postman, SeattleTimes.com
Another voter explained that she uses two signatures, one generic and one official:
Cheryl Triplett said she has a "generic signature" and an "official signature." The survey got the generic. The affidavit got the official.
She does that out of fear of identify theft, she said. She doesn't want to put anything through the mail with her official signature.
In fact, that's what got her ballot tossed initially. She used the generic signature on the absentee ballot because it was going through the mail. When it didn't match her signature on file at King County, her ballot was rejected.
Postman, SeattleTimes.com
And in one case, a voter offered a very simple reason the signature on the check was different from the one on the affidavit: her husband endorsed and deposited the check. State Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt suggested that many signature mismatches would have such explanations.
One cryptic quote in the
Timesarticle, from BIAW executive vice president Tom McCabe:
"I'm like the old weird uncle in the basement," McCabe joked.
Before sending the surveys, McCabe compared a few signatures from the affidavits to court records and became suspicious about what looked like mismatched signatures.
"Scientists say that you shouldn't do an experiment if you have a conclusion already. I had a conclusion. I thought they had cheated," he said.
Postman, SeattleTimes.com
One wonders if that enthusiasm will be a significant factor in any way. McCabe, however, is somewhat realistic despite his zeal:
McCabe said yesterday he's not sure what his forgery investigation will turn up. But he remains suspicious.
"There are a lot of questions here that deserve an answer and deserve an investigation by someone other than Tom McCabe," McCabe said.
Postman, SeattleTimes.com
Anyone know if Vegas has odds on this contest?
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