Posted on 01/07/2005 10:12:48 AM PST by BurbankKarl
Voting by dead people isn't always a scam
By Jonathan Martin and David Heath Seattle Times staff reporters
Days after his wife of four decades died of liver cancer, Robert Holmgren came home to find her absentee ballot. He filled in Charlette Holmgren's intended votes for Dino Rossi and George W. Bush, forged her signature, and mailed her ballot along with his.
"I know by the law it wasn't right, but it felt right in my heart," he said. "I wasn't trying to defraud anybody. I was just going with my wife's last wishes."
In six of the state's largest counties, at least 24 dead people were credited with voting in the November election. Some of those can be explained as clerical errors — a voter mistakenly signing the wrong line in a poll book, for instance — and others are cases in which people inadvertently voted in their relatives' names but not in their own.
But three of the cases, including Holmgren's, warrant referral for felony prosecution, elections officials said last night, and several others require further investigation.
Allegations of dead-voter fraud have reverberated on the Internet and talk radio. And the state Republican Party intends to cite dead voters in its expected challenge of the closest gubernatorial election in state history, one in which Democrat Christine Gregoire beat Republican Rossi by 129 votes.
But despite the handful of suspicious cases in which dead people were credited with voting, in at least half of the two dozen cases there is no evidence that extra votes were cast in dead people's names, according to a Seattle Times analysis reviewed by county officials. The clerical errors and surviving relatives' slip-ups mean the wrong person — but not an additional person — was credited with voting.
All but two of the dead voters were in King County. Pierce County did not provide voter history despite numerous requests for the records. One dead voter was from Clark County in southwest Washington, and one was from Spokane County. Of the 24, 14 were credited with voting absentee and 10 with voting at the polls.
Secretary of State Sam Reed said he would "prosecute to the hilt" any valid case of fraudulent votes cast by the dead. But he said he was relieved that there appeared to be few such cases and said the enormity of this year's voter registration and turnout may explain some of the clerical mistakes.
At the request of The Seattle Times, King County elections manager Bill Huennekens opened poll books and voting records to reporters, examining 22 instances where the dead were credited with voting.
Chris Vance, state Republican chairman, said the party has researched votes credited to dead people and believes fraud is a serious problem. "People pass away, then other people vote their ballot," he said. "There's not hundreds [of ballots], but it happens, and in a close election it matters."
Removing names
The slow and cumbersome process of removing the deceased from voter rolls opens a window for mistakes.
Florence Kinnune, whose 71-year-old husband, Charles, died in September, said she wrote the word "deceased" on his absentee ballot envelope and returned it to the county. He was credited with voting.
In some cases, election workers simply scanned the wrong line in poll books. In Clark County, Angie Johnsen, who died in 1997, was credited for a vote cast by Daryl Johnson, whose name is listed below hers, according to county auditor Greg Kimsey.
In King County, Brandon Jones lives in the home of his late grandfather, Donald Jones, and he voted this year at the polls. But a poll worker scanned the wrong line of the poll book, giving Donald, not Brandon, credit for voting.
In other cases, people cast ballots in the name of dead relatives. Maxine A. Zemko of Seattle said she has been voting under the name of Maxine M. Zemko — her mother — since her mother's death in 1983.
That year, according to the younger Zemko, King County elections workers mistakenly erased her from the voter rolls instead of her deceased mother. As an additional complication, Maxine A. Zemko bought her mother's house, so both Maxine Zemkos shared an address. And as her mother would have, Maxine A. Zemko said, she voted for Christine Gregoire.
"Nobody has ever questioned me," said Maxine A. Zemko. "That's part of why I kept doing it, because I wondered how long it would take for them to figure it out. I guess I should fix it."
Usually not a scheme
Nationally, there is rich lore about dead voters, said election reform expert Doug Chapin, citing an old joke from Boston about voters wanting to be buried in specific city boroughs to have their voting rights live on.
But voting by the dead usually indicates simple error and not a widespread scheme, he said. "The reality may not match the lore," said Chapin, director of the nonpartisan Election Reform Information Project.
County elections offices are supposed to receive quarterly updates of death certificates from the state Department of Health to purge dead voters' names from their rolls. But there is usually a six-month delay in processing data. That meant a May update didn't include any 2004 deaths, and a November update came the day before the election — too late to purge the dead.
There is another problem: Counties aren't notified of all deaths in the state, so sometimes a voter's death notice goes to the wrong county.
Under a federal law passed after the 2000 presidential election, the secretary of state is compiling a statewide voter-registration database that may ease the confusion.
It is possible for the votes to be legitimately credited to the dead. Pamela Floyd, the state's deputy elections manager, said an absentee ballot cast by a person who then dies before Election Day counts. "The day they cast their ballot is Election Day for them," she said, citing court rulings.
In whose hand?
Anne Witte's absentee-ballot envelope from the November election is signed in what looks like her elegant script, with a flowing W and looped T's.
But Witte, a longtime Republican activist from Sammamish, could not have penned the signature. She died in February.
Vernon Witte, her husband, said he never saw the ballot and thinks it might have been stolen from his mailbox.
According to the election office, Anne Witte's ballot was postmarked Oct. 28. The signature on the ballot envelope, shown to The Times, closely matched that on Anne Witte's voter-registration card.
Dean Logan, head of King County elections, said the matched signatures made him question the authenticity of Anne Witte's original card. "I want to do more research," he said.
Other ballots also defy easy explanation. Marcia Pettersen, 54, the daughter of Joan MacDonald, said she had been picking up the mail for her mother since the 81-year-old woman died last August. MacDonald was credited with voting by absentee.
"I never saw an absentee ballot," Pettersen said. "I have no idea how this could have happened."
Viola Fey, whose 80-year-old husband, John, died in May, said she recalls throwing his ballot into the trash.
"They came on the same day. I sent mine in and threw his out," she said.
Reed said the super-heated election year may have derailed purges of dead voters. In addition to dealing with a new primary-voting model, counties struggled with record numbers of voter registrations and ballots.
Some voters, he said, may have taken advantage. "The emotion over this presidential race exceeded any other race I've seen. People felt like it was a holy crusade, either anti-Bush or pro-Bush. When people get that emotional, and temptation is in front of them, well ... "
Seattle Times reporters Justin Mayo, Christine Willmsen, Mike Carter and Cheryl Phillips contributed to this report.
Ron Sims is the King County Executive.
In King County, unlike most counties in this state, has the elections function is not under the County Auditor's responsibility, but instead under the control of the County Executive.
Ron Sims is a prominent Democrat in the State and actually was the main Democratic Party rival in the primary Goveror's race to Chris Gregoire. Ron has high party aspirations and has been known to pull political fast ones every now and then.
After years of problems with the elections dept in King County and a very pointed State Auditor report, the King County Executive (Ron Sims) and the King County Council got into a fight and re-organized the elections department and put in under control of both Democratic Party dominated organizations. The County Council set up a Citizens Election Oversight Committee to make sure that the new Elections head, Mr. Dan Logan, cleaned things up, even though it is still functionally under the control of the County Executive, Ron Sims.
None of the problems being discussed is totally a new problem that was not known prior to the election. It was just that the King County Council, its Citizens Oversight Committee, and Ron Sims were all saying earlier in the year that all the problems were be worked out.
It is now clear that the mess was not fixed. It is even more clear that "the buck doesn't stop on Mr. Sims or the County Coumcils desk."
Sad for the old guy but he voted for her AFTER she died. That is a straight violation of the law. (of course we are assuming he voted democrat, the article does not say and it would change nothing)
This article sounds like damage control. The democrats are in trouble.
Is seems clear the mess was made worse.
Like I said, very interesting!! But...that "selected" BS didn't work to stop W's re-election, so I say, go for it and let the Dem. chips (is that like "cow chips"? ouch! / mean) fall where they may...hopefully in jail!
Thanks for the info/update!
Sam Reed said that? Then in addition to being a RINO, he's barely literate.
(Some of us would agree that there was "enormity" in the Dim fraud, however.)
Actually, I honestly believe Logan "reduced" the amount of problems. It was a horrible mess, now it is just a bad mess.
Having said that, Logan, Sims and the County Council are still responsible for not cleaning things up adequately.
The only problem is that I don't think that either Mr. Sims is that "intelligent" to pull it all off and I don't think the democrats of King County are "smart enough and dedicated enough" to attempt this. Organized Labor, Certain radical civil rights groups, and some radical feminists groups might be dedicated enough to try to really steal the election, but I am not sure the King County Democrats are.
I could see out-of-state get out the vote groups trying to steal the election, but nobody thought it was going to be close . The convensional wisdom was that Chris G had it locked up. Therefore, it is unlikely that an out-of-state group would have infiltrated or spent the kind of money required to add a couple thousand votes prior to Nov 2nd to a Democratic forecast Governors victory election.
Stinkin' reporters: They lead with a story of one of the few republican's who cheated in this election, trying to make it appear that both parties cheat.
Nonetheless, assuming the stories are true, it is a tinkle in the ocean compared to the stories they apparently didn't find worth investigating such as:
It wouldn't have mattered if your grandma had died after voting.
She cast a legitimate ballot. It's would be no difference if she had been hit by a car leaving the polls.
The vote would still be legitimate.
Your post sounds like she got better. I hope so.
Unfortunately no. She held on past the holidays, but turned into a sad excuse for a family reunion, thanks for the well wishes though, things like that count.
How Democrats Steal Elections - Top 10 Methods of Liberal Vote Fraud
1. Over-Voting. In Democrat strongholds like St. Louis, Philadelphia and Detroit, some precincts had 100% of their registered voters voting, with 99% of the ballots going to Gore. Clearly, multiple voting resulted in extra tallies for Gore in the 2000 election. (New York Post, 12/09/00).
2. Dead Voters. This classic Democratic method of vote fraud goes all the way back to 1960 in Chicago and Dallas. The 2000 election was no exception. In Miami-Dade County, for example, some of the 144 ineligible votes (those which officials actually admitted to) were cast by dead people, including a Haitian-American who's been deceased since 1977 (Miami-Herald, 12/24/00).
3. Mystery Voters. These "voters" cast votes anyway but are not even registered to vote. In heavily Democratic Broward County, for example, more than 400 ballots were cast by non-registered voters. (Miami-Herald 1/09/01)
4. Military ballots. Many of these votes were disqualified for the most mundane and trivial reasons. At least 1,527 valid military ballots were discarded in Florida by Democratic vote counters (Drudge Report, 11/19/00).
5. Criminals. Felons are a natural Democratic voter and they're protected on voter rolls across the country. In Florida at least 445 ex-convicts - including rapists and murderers -- voted illegally on November 7th. Nearly all of them were registered Democrats. (Miami-Herald 12/01/00)
6. Illegal aliens. These voters have long been a core liberal constituency, especially in California. In Orange County in 1996, Rep. Bob Dornan had his congressional seat stolen from him when thousands of illegal aliens voted for Loretta Sanchez (Christian Science Monitor, 9/2/97).
7. Vote-buying. Purchasing votes has long been a traditional scheme by Democrats, and not just with money. In the 2000 election in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Democratic workers initiate a "smokes-for-votes" campaign in which they paid dozens of homeless men with cigarettes if they cast ballots for Al Gore (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 11/14/00).
8. Phantom Voters. These voters don't really exist, but their ballots do. In the 1996 Lousiana Senate race, GOP candidate Woody Jenkins had the election stolen from him when he discovered that 7,454 actual votes were cast but had no paper trail to authenticate them (Behind the Headlines, F.R. Duplantier, 4/27/97).
9. Dimpled chads. Those infamous punch-cards were a ballot bonanza for Al Gore. Democratic poll workers in Palm Beach, Dade and Broward counties tampered and manipulated thousands of ineligible ballots and counted them for Gore, even though no clear vote could be discerned. (NewsMax.com 11/27, 12/22, 11/18, 11/19/00).
10. Absentee ballots. Normally it's assumed that Republicans benefit from absentee ballots. But in the case of Miami's 1997 mayoral election, hundreds of absentee ballots were made for sale or sent out to non-Miami residents. Fraud was so extensive in the race that the final results were overturned in court (FL Dept. of Law Enforcement Report, 1/5/98)."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=votefraud
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=electionfraud
Yes and it was a republican dead person as well.
The Seattle Slimes is shameless.
Fraud is fraud. His wife's eligibility to vote ended with her death. He should be prosecuted.
Great link... Thanks!
I don't care who the dead person voted for, they don't meet the criteria to vote. Good try Seattle Times.
It's funny that the paper finds a "republican" who helped his dead wife vote for Rossi. I'm guessing that they are trying to deflect from the massive democratic dead who voted by saying that "republicans do it too."
I'm not familiar with the Seattle paper, but here in KC the paper is as liberal a rag as you will find.
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