« Mine is not to question why... | Main | You know you've hit a nerve when.... »

January 15, 2005

Allegations of dead voters in WA governor's race bogus

The Seattle Times does the heavy lifting:

But despite the handful of suspicious cases in which dead people were credited with voting, in at least half of the two dozen cases there is no evidence that extra votes were cast in dead people's names, according to a Seattle Times analysis reviewed by county officials. The clerical errors and surviving relatives' slip-ups mean the wrong person — but not an additional person — was credited with voting.

All but two of the dead voters were in King County. Pierce County did not provide voter history despite numerous requests for the records. One dead voter was from Clark County in southwest Washington, and one was from Spokane County. Of the 24, 14 were credited with voting absentee and 10 with voting at the polls.

The Republicans are still fishing, however...in the convicted felon pool:

Republicans want a copy of the state's criminal-records database to compare it with the names of the nearly 3 million people who voted in the governor's race, as party attorneys search for felons who cast illegal ballots.

Yesterday, attorneys for Dino Rossi and the Republican Party asked the State Patrol for an electronic copy of that database, the Washington State Identification System. The list contains more than 1.2 million records. Republicans are hoping to do a quicker and less expensive search than what is available to the general public.

Apparently this is at taxpayer expense and outside the way the State Patrol handles these records.

At least the "I see dead people voting" contingent can lay that one to rest.

It's my understanding that convicted felons can vote once they've served their time. It seems a stretch to go through this database fishing for felons who are entitled to vote.

Posted by Carla at January 15, 2005 08:32 AM