Judge revises voting address, avoids hearing on challenge

Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Betty Fletcher and her husband avoided a hearing over their voter registrations yesterday by submitting a new home address.

The Fletchers submitted address changes to King County elections officials, substituting their home address in Seattle for the King County Administration Building, which they had previously given as their home address on their voter registrations.

Bob Edelman, election-reform project manager for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank, had challenged their registrations, saying the couple had used invalid addresses.

Edelman said the use of an erroneous address would have allowed them to vote in state legislative races in which they were ineligible.

County Elections Director Dean Logan canceled the planned hearing after the couple submitted address changes.

Betty Fletcher said she and her husband, Robert Fletcher, an emeritus professor at the University of Washington School of Law, had used the administration-building address because of death threats related to her work as a judge.

"One of the reasons we changed our address is that we are in a condominium," she said. "Bombs have been mailed to judges, and I felt that we should protect the people who live around us as well."

Edelman said his challenge "was never about Judge Fletcher, but about two people who should have known better and King County elections officials who have been accepting invalid addresses for years."

Elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said she could find no indication that election officials had knowingly approved the Fletchers' use of the administration building as a home address. "Nor do we have the authority to do so," she said in an e-mail.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com