5,224 dead are registered to vote

An initial check of a statewide voter-registration database found at least 5,224 dead people registered to vote in Washington and more than 3,000 voters registered twice.

So far, Secretary of State Sam Reed's office hasn't found anyone who voted illegally. But it's still investigating an additional 35,000 names that a computer flagged as suspicious.

The database of all 3.8 million active and inactive Washington voters was released Wednesday. The database creation brings the state into compliance with the 2002 Federal Help America Vote Act. It's also something elections offices around the state "have been waiting for," said King County elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan.

Elections departments, especially in King County, have been under fire for making mistakes in elections. The state political parties examined voting records after the close 2004 governor's election and found thousands of mistakes, including people voting twice, people registered to vote numerous times and felons voting illegally.

"How can people trust the elections system in Washington state ... when there is room for such gross error and fraud?" the Republican Party said in a statement. A spokesman for the party said that while the data released Wednesday didn't show error or fraud, the party would "follow up," because having mistakes on the voter rolls leaves room for fraud.

The spokesman, Brad Harwood, said the new database is "a step in the right direction."

State Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz said the new numbers show that the system is working.

"I think what's been troubling about this whole experience is that the Republicans have been trying to challenge our entire democracy by casting doubt on our entire system," he said.

The Secretary of State's Office now will go through the list searching for felons who haven't had their voting rights restored. A Seattle Times investigation last spring found the state law that prohibits felons from voting without getting their rights restored by a judge has not been regularly enforced. The number of felons voting illegally became a major issue in a lawsuit over the 2004 gubernatorial race.

The secretary of state used a federal database to find voters who had died. Counties had only used in-state data to clean out their voter rolls. Now his office will do the same check once a month. Once a quarter, the staff will check for felons — a more complicated task.

After the governor's election, most counties did a thorough cleaning of their lists, said assistant secretary of state Steve Excell. King County merged more than 18,000 duplicate registrations and removed nearly 9,000 deceased people from the voter rolls.

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com