An arm of the King County Republican Party called the Voter Registration Integrity Project filed the challenges Oct. 26, charging that all 1,944 voters were illegally registered at mailboxes or storage units. According to state law, voters must declare their residential addresses when registering.
Logan sent letters to the voters dated Tuesday, informing them of the challenges and telling them that unless they transferred their registrations to their residences or re-registered by today, their votes in Tuesday’s election would be treated as “challenged ballots.”
The county Canvassing Board would decide whether to count them at hearings later this month, Logan wrote.
In each letter, Logan also included a copy of the challenge itself, in which King County GOP Vice Chairwoman Lori Sotelo attests “under penalty of perjury” that she has “personal knowledge” that, contrary to state law, the voter doesn’t reside at the address at which he or she is registered.
County elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said some voters who received the letters and called were registered to vote at the addresses of businesses where they rented private mail boxes; she said she didn’t know how many.
Logan said many calls were from irate voters who said they were registered at their residences.
Bob Thoma said he and his partner, Jim Blodgett, both received letters. “I am upset beyond words,” he said. “She [Sotelo] didn’t take the time to do her homework.”
Thoma said he and Blodgett live in an apartment at the Capitol Hill storage-unit complex he manages. He said it has been his voting address for 11 years. He said he may have to take a day off work to attend the hearing to defend his vote.
Barbara Taylor, who said she lives and is registered to vote at the storage-unit complex she manages in Wallingford, said she, her husband and her daughter all received letters informing them their registrations had been challenged. She said she intends to vote but wondered if the challenges would dissuade other voters.
“How many people are just going to say, ‘I just won’t vote’ ?” Taylor said.
Taylor said she knew of at least two other live-in managers at storage-unit complexes whose registrations had been challenged.
Jeff Weber, another voter whose registration was challenged, said he lives and is registered at his home in West Seattle, and is mystified about how he ended up on the Republicans’ list.
“I think it’s outrageous,” he said. “It’s a bungalow in West Seattle. … It’s a single-family house on a 5,000-square-foot lot. If they had done any investigating at all, they would have known.”
Annette Fallin of Belltown said she was notified her registration had been challenged the same day she mailed in her absentee ballot.
“I’m very irate over it,” she said. “I get this piece of mail telling me they’re not even counting it like a normal ballot.”
The challenge to Fallin’s registration was one of the 140 the GOP dropped Friday. More than 50 of the 140 were registered at her apartment building, the Watermarke on Cedar Street.
The challenges to Thoma’s, Taylor’s, Blodgett’s and Weber’s registrations were not rescinded.
Sotelo was not available for comment. Vance, returning calls on her behalf, said Republicans developed their list by computer, running the street addresses of private mailbox businesses and storage-unit complexes against the addresses of registered voters. He said volunteers took pictures of each of the suspect buildings, but the party didn’t attempt to contact voters because it lacked manpower.
“I’m sure there’s a small number of errors,” Vance said. “To those people, we apologize. … We’ve never done this before.
Ask yourself, when you think about political parties and voting, which party wants to enlarge the franchise and which is always trying to find ways to suppress voting by groups who support their opponents.
Think we’ll see the state officials involved in this dismissed, punished, or censured?
