Voter names found twice

Just one month before voters decide the future of King County's Democratic executive, Ron Sims, Republican Party leaders yesterday accused his administration of failing to remove thousands of duplicate registrations from the voter rolls.

GOP officials and Republican members of the Metropolitan King County Council said they officially will challenge the registrations of about 2,050 voters Monday.

In all, they said they found nearly 3,400 voters they suspect are registered twice with the county's Elections Office. They say they are challenging only those they can fully document.

Duplicate registrations can occur when voters re-register with new addresses or name changes if their old registrations aren't deleted from the voter database. The duplications alleged by the Republicans represent less than half a percent of King County's more than 1 million registered voters.

If duplicate registrations are not purged from the rolls, those voters could cast more than one ballot in an election, which is illegal. Republicans yesterday released the names of 16 voters they say voted twice in the contested 2004 governor's race.

Illegal votes, accounting errors and mishandled ballots in King County played a prominent role in Republican Dino Rossi's lawsuit challenging the election of Democrat Christine Gregoire as governor last year. Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges ruled in June that he did not find a basis for overturning the election.

Election officials and Sims quickly said yesterday that at least one name on the GOP's duplicate-voters list appeared to be a mistake — and they questioned the Republicans' motives in making a media splash.

Elections Office spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said a woman singled out by the Republican Party as having voted twice in the 2004 general election and again in the 2005 primary actually appears to be two women with the same name but different birthdates.

At least two other names on the list of suspected double voters have been referred to the county Prosecutor's Office, and criminal charges have been filed against one person.

Elections Director Dean Logan said the Republicans seemed more interested in scoring partisan political points than in solving problems.

But Republican County Councilman David Irons, who is running against Sims for county executive, said his party's analysis of the voting list shows that Sims and Logan aren't doing their jobs.

Irons has repeatedly called for Logan's dismissal and has proposed a county charter amendment that would put elections in the hands of an elected auditor.

"It's a sad day that we're here again talking about election flaws from this election and past elections," Irons said. "Dean Logan, why didn't you do the data search that, quite frankly, any high-school computer student could do?"

Logan took the unusual step of meeting with reporters before the Republican news conference to defend his record and attack his critics. About 40 election workers attended the meeting to show support for their boss.

"This has gone beyond interest in the elections and election integrity. In essence, this is a witch hunt trying to make this a top-tier campaign issue," Logan said later.

Logan said his office, as part of routine list maintenance, has purged the voter list of 9,100 voters' duplicate registrations and has dropped the names of 8,900 dead voters this year.

He said County Councilwoman Kathy Lambert, R-Woodinville, asked him several weeks ago to look at a Republican Party list of apparent duplicate voters and he agreed to do so. But instead of bringing him the list so he could check those registrations, Logan said, he learned yesterday morning the Republicans were preparing to release their findings directly to news media.

When Logan reminded her of that conversation yesterday, Lambert said, she told him that Republicans would give Logan their list and any future lists so errors in the voter rolls could be corrected.

The voter challenges being prepared by the Republicans will address two categories of suspected double registrations: voters who have exact matches of birthdate, address, and first, middle and last names; and women with matching first names, addresses and birthdates. The second group, numbering 3,702, are believed to have changed their last names because of marriage or divorce.

The Republicans are not at this time challenging 2,650 registrations of voters who they believe moved to new addresses but whose previous registrations were not purged. They will continue to investigate those voters, said party vice chairwoman Lori Sotelo.

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