GOP not dropping voter challenges

Even though the election is over, Republicans won't drop their challenges of about 1,600 King County voters' registrations, state GOP Chairman Chris Vance said Wednesday.

The King County Canvassing Board is planning hearings later this month to decide whether to count ballots cast by the challenged voters. "Lori [Sotelo, the Republican activist who filed the challenges] will be there, probably not alone, and will present the information we've gathered," Vance said.

Meanwhile, Metropolitan King County Councilman Larry Phillips, D-Seattle, asked County Prosecutor Norm Maleng to investigate whether Sotelo committed perjury in filing some of the challenges without justification.

Vance labeled Phillips' request "pure politics." Maleng's spokesman, Dan Donohoe, said the prosecutor is just beginning to look into the matter.

Sotelo heads an arm of the county GOP called the Voter Registration Integrity Project. It challenged the registrations of 1,944 voters Oct. 26; party leaders said all were registered at private-mailbox businesses and storage complexes and not at their actual residences, as state law requires.

The challenges were part of a long-running GOP campaign to draw attention to problems the party sees in the county elections office.

For each challenge, Sotelo signed an affidavit declaring, "under penalty of perjury" that she had "personal knowledge and belief" that the voter wasn't registered at a valid residential address.

Hundreds of confused, angry voters flooded the county elections office with calls when they were informed of the challenges late last week. Many were, indeed, registered at mailbox businesses; 155 changed their registration addresses in time for Tuesday's election.

But some of the challenges were baseless. Sotelo withdrew 140 Friday, admitting they were mistakes. Other voters who still face challenges say they are registered at their homes, and Sotelo never contacted them.

In his letter to Maleng, Phillips said Sotelo's "basis for 'personal knowledge and belief' of falsified voter registrations is highly questionable," and she should be investigated for possible perjury.

The crime is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. So is knowingly providing false information on a voter-registration application.

County elections director Dean Logan said Wednesday his office doesn't know how many challenged voters cast ballots, either at polling places Tuesday or by mail.

He said many who voted at polling places were frustrated by the additional hassle of filing a "challenged" ballot. One upset voter visited the elections office later to complain, he said.

The canvassing-board hearings to determine whether the challenged voters are legally registered — and whether their votes should be counted — probably won't start before the end of next week, Logan said. They must be completed before the election is certified Nov. 29.

Challenged voters will be notified of hearing dates by certified and regular mail, he said. They can attend or send affidavits.

King County Democrats, who claimed that the Republican challenges were an attempt to intimidate and disenfranchise voters and discredit County Executive Ron Sims, are considering assisting voters at the hearings, said David McDonald, a party national-committee member.

Shanna Sawatzki, a Democratic activist who contacted a number of challenged voters over the weekend, said most who registered using mailbox businesses as their addresses did so because it was convenient and didn't know it was illegal. "They didn't have any ill intent," she said.

By law, Sotelo has the burden of proof at the hearings. She referred calls to Vance, who said he was not aware of any voters who had intentionally registered at "nonresidential" addresses to influence elections illegally or otherwise commit election fraud.

That's not the point, he added: "We don't know why they did it. We only know they're registered illegally."

Vance repeated his contention that Logan's office should have been catching such illegal registrations itself. He also said the errors Republicans made in filing their challenges shouldn't detract from their claims of inaccuracy and sloppiness in the county's elections operations.

"We had some volunteers who made some errors," he said. "We are a political party; they are the government; it's a completely different standard."

Logan said his office checks registration addresses to make certain they exist but doesn't routinely go further. Business addresses aren't "flagged" because elections officials can't determine arbitrarily whether a residence exists there, he added.

Other than dealing with the frustration of challenged voters, Logan said, Tuesday's election generally went smoothly. A handful of polling places ran out of standard, English-language ballots late in the day, he said, but workers were able to substitute "provisional" ballots or Chinese-language ballots with the candidates' names and measures' titles in English.

Neither Vance nor King County GOP Chairman Michael Young said they had heard of any irregularities.

"Yesterday was a good day," Logan said. "Things went well." He attributed that in part to changes his office has adopted since the tumultuous November 2004 election, including more training for poll workers and new technology to keep provisional ballots from being tallied inadvertently before their legitimacy is determined.

But Logan also said turnout appeared to be higher than the 45 percent he forecast and could hit 48 percent or more. About 150,000 mail ballots already at the elections office still must be processed and counted, and more are in the mail.

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com