GOP questions more registrations

The county Republican Party plans to release research Wednesday showing 1,943 voters are illegally registered at mailbox-rental facilities.

The registrations in question represent 0.2 percent of the 1 million registered voters in King County.

"It's a very small percentage, but given that we had a very close election last year that was decided by 129 votes, this is very important," said Ross Marzolf, executive director of the King County Republican Party. "Every vote is important, and everyone should feel confident that their vote is not diminished by another vote that is illegal."

Bobbie Egan, a spokeswoman for the King County Elections Office, said, "What's most important here is that people understand election officials are not the police — we are not allowed to go out and police registrations. ... "

Earlier this month, the Republican Party challenged what it claims are 5,200 duplicate registrations on the county's voter rolls, accusing Democratic County Executive Ron Sims and his administration of making mistakes. Sims is up for re-election in November.

Republican Party leaders plan to release new evidence that some voters are registered at the addresses of stores that rent out mailboxes. According to state law, voters must declare their residential addresses when registering. The party declined to release any evidence Monday about those registrations.

Egan said if the county Elections Office finds residential addresses containing a post-office box or a rental mailbox, it places the registration on "fatally pend" status and requests a street address from the voter. The county currently has 1,921 registrations classified as "fatally pend."

However, if a voter lists a street address for a mailbox-rental company as the voter's residential address without a "P.O. Box" or "P.M.B." (private mailbox) label, the county does not investigate unless it's notified otherwise.

Many mailbox-rental shops share addresses with condominium and apartment buildings, making it difficult to separate out the residential addresses, Egan said.

Shirley Forslof, the Whatcom County auditor who works under a nonpartisan executive, said her office doesn't investigate residential addresses without post-office or rental-mailbox designations, either.

"If it was brought to our attention, we would verify the address," she said. "But if it goes through our system, if the voter swears that's their residential address and we mail out a confirmation card and it's received, we would have no way of knowing that it wasn't a valid address."

As for the duplicate registrations the party publicized earlier this month, Egan says most were from married or divorced women who instead of amending their registration with new names unknowingly registered as a new voter, creating a duplicate registration.

NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, Northwest Women's Law Center and other women and voter-rights groups recently put out a joint statement of concern about the voter challenges, pointing out that the list of duplicate registrations "appears to target married and divorced women. ... It is shameful to attempt to disenfranchise women voters who have made an innocent mistake. We are angered that leaders of the Republican Party appear willing to disenfranchise legal voters for their own political gain."

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958 or schan@seattletimes.com