55,000 dead or duplicate voters deleted from state database

OLYMPIA — The Secretary of State's Office has deleted about 55,000 registrations from Washington's voter rolls after finding duplicate records and dead voters with the aid of a new statewide database.

The database, put in place earlier this year, allowed the state to find 19,579 dead people still on the rolls and 35,445 duplicate voter records.

"It's a critical piece to help regain the trust and confidence of the voters of the state of Washington," Secretary of State Sam Reed said Friday. "I think we are slowly but surely rebuilding trust in the system."

Voter confidence was shaken in 2004, when Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire narrowly beat Republican Dino Rossi after two recounts. The tumultuous election was replete with lost ballots, mismatched signatures, and dead people and convicted felons casting ballots. Rossi challenged the election in court and lost.

Several changes were made by the state Legislature to help keep the problems from happening again, including moving the primary back from the third Tuesday in September to the third Tuesday in August, starting in 2007. That move is expected to give election workers more time to get out absentee and overseas ballots to voters for the general election.

The scrub of the state database found few cases of potential voter fraud. About 30 cases of possible double voting were forwarded to county officials for investigation, Reed said.

The database was paid for with federal money as part of the national 2002 Help America Vote Act. It consolidates individual lists kept by the state's 39 counties into one database.

The information can be cross-checked with records at the state Department of Licensing, the Department of Health, the Department of Corrections and the Social Security Administration.

Booker Stallworth, a spokesman for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, disagreed that the database will help restore voter confidence.

"The problems we experienced in the 2004 election, that fiasco, have not been addressed in a systematic way," he said. "There are things that can be done that can actually restore voter confidence in the system."

For example, his group advocates requiring all registered voters in the state to supply their legal name and proof of citizenship to guarantee the accuracy of the voter rolls.

Reed said he hasn't pushed for that type of requirement because courts in other parts of the country have viewed such actions as discriminatory.

Reed said his office will do regular checks throughout the year to keep the database up to date and purge names of people who have died or have duplicate registrations. Duplications can occur when people move to a different county and register to vote, but fail to notify officials of the change.

The state also is checking the database for the names of people who are registered to vote and are currently serving time for a felony conviction. So far the state has found about 900 names of people who could be in prison but still are on voter-registration rolls.

"Those are being investigated," Reed said.

A King County Superior Court judge recently struck down a state law that bars felons, who are out of prison, from voting until they have paid all their court-ordered fines and fees. The state is appealing that ruling, but for now Reed's office is not purging those voters.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Andrew Garber: 360-943-9882 or agarber@seattletimes.com