Maleng: Voter rolls flawed

Republican challenges to hundreds of King County voters' registrations have exposed a "serious flaw" in voter rolls statewide that needs to be fixed quickly to restore public trust, county Prosecutor Norm Maleng said Tuesday.

He called on the attorney general, secretary of state and Legislature for help, and said his office is prepared to investigate voters who persist in maintaining registration addresses at private-mailbox businesses and other locations where they don't live.

"It is not acceptable that these incomplete and illegal registrations are allowed to stand without being corrected," the Republican prosecutor said at a news conference.

County elections director Dean Logan said he and Maleng are trying to accomplish the same thing.

"Where there's an issue, it's over what is the best way to correct it," he said.

Maleng spoke a day after a divided King County Canvassing Board, which Logan chairs, rejected more than 70 percent of the GOP registration challenges of voters who cast ballots in the Nov. 8 election.

Maleng's chief of staff, Dan Satterberg, a member of the board, was on the losing end of most votes, and many of Maleng's remarks Tuesday echoed Satterberg's the day before.

Like Satterberg, Maleng disputed one reason the board's other members gave for rejecting most challenges: that state law requires challengers to provide voters' actual addresses, something the GOP generally didn't do. Maleng called that legal reasoning "strained."

He also announced that he won't pursue perjury charges against the Republican leader who filed the challenges, a step some Democrats had urged.

Lori Sotelo, a county GOP vice chairwoman, challenged the registrations of more than 1,900 voters Oct. 26, attesting "under penalty of perjury" that all were registered at non-residential addresses.

Sotelo later withdrew more than 170 challenges, admitting they were mistakes.

County Executive Ron Sims, who joined other Democrats in urging Maleng to investigate possible perjury charges against Sotelo after the errors came to light, is "incredibly disappointed" the prosecutor won't investigate, said spokesman Sandeep Kaushik.

"There are no consequences for [filing unsubstantiated challenges] now," he said.

"It's just going to invite more of this kind of mischief in the future," added Metropolitan King County Councilman Larry Phillips, D-Seattle.

But Maleng said there's no proof that Sotelo lied intentionally.

"There's no criminal intent there," he said.

Sotelo filed her challenges less than two weeks before the election, in which Sims was seeking a third term. Republicans said the challenges were evidence that he and Logan weren't doing their jobs. Democrats said Republicans aimed only to intimidate voters and hurt Sims.

At his news conference Tuesday, Maleng called on the two parties to "lower their voices" and work together to fix the problem the challenges pointed out. It's almost certainly not limited to King County, he added.

"We're very glad to see the prosecutor's office taking this seriously," said state GOP Chairman Chris Vance. "This is all moving in the right direction."

More than 1,000 of the GOP challenges remain to be decided, for voters who didn't cast ballots Nov. 8. Logan, who will make the decisions, has acknowledged that many appear to be registered at mailbox businesses or storage complexes, and has said his office will contact those voters to try to get their residential addresses.

Maleng said he will ask Secretary of State Sam Reed and Attorney General Rob McKenna for opinions on whether challengers must provide voters' actual addresses for any challenges that remain. While he said he believes the answer is no, Maleng said his office is ready to investigate and provide those addresses if they are needed to make the challenges stick.

Assistant Secretary of State Steve Excell said his office agrees with Maleng's interpretation of the law, "but when people read the statute, reasonable people could differ."

He said Reed plans to ask the Legislature to clarify the law.

Logan said Sotelo's failure to provide actual addresses for challenged voters wasn't the only reason he voted to reject most challenges before the Canvassing Board.

In addition, he said, the challengers didn't provide "clear and convincing evidence" that no one could or did live at the addresses where the voters are registered.

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