Posted on 04/29/2005 7:20:52 PM PDT by Mount Athos
Working from lists provided to them in the aftermath of the troubled 2004 election, King County prosecutors have identified 648 felons illegally registered to vote, officials said yesterday.
Illegal votes from felons play a central role in the Republican Party's legal attack on the election of Democrat Christine Gregoire as governor in November. Gregoire edged Republican Dino Rossi by 129 votes after a hand recount of more than 2.8 million ballots, and the GOP is suing to set aside that result in a trial starting May 23 in Wenatchee.
"The government is making our case for us," state Republican chairman Chris Vance said.
The state constitution bars felons from voting unless they have completed their sentences and paid their fines and thus restored their political rights.
The GOP submitted 891 names of King County residents they said were felons who voted illegally in November, and prosecutors ultimately moved to revoke the registrations of 549 of them. Ninety-nine other revocations were triggered by a 105- name list provided by The Seattle Times. The Republicans sent the county 55 more names Wednesday, prosecutors said, and those voters, too, will be investigated.
In the court case, the GOP has listed the names of 726 King County voters the party claims are felons who illegally cast ballots in November. That number includes the voters challenged by prosecutors so far, as well as the additional 55, Vance said.
The Republicans also have claimed 220 illegal felon voters elsewhere, and 389 other types of improper votes -- mainly provisional ballots counted without the required verification of voter eligibility.
In pretrial rulings in the case, Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges has said it won't be enough for the GOP to show the number of illegal votes exceeded Gregoire's margin of victory. Instead, the Republicans must establish that she owes her win to illegal votes, Bridges said.
The Republicans hope to meet that requirement by applying a statistical formula to the illegal votes, subtracting them from the candidates' totals in proportion to the percentage of the overall vote each candidate received in the affected precincts. Gregoire beat Rossi by 58 percent to 40 percent in King County, so she is especially vulnerable to that approach there.
Click Here But the Democrats say the methodology is not allowed under state law. They'll argue the point Monday in a hearing before Bridges.
The parties also are wrangling in Bridges' court over what the GOP has to show in challenging votes by felons.
The Republicans say it should be adequate to document that a voter is a felon and that there's no record in his file of a certificate restoring his rights. Democrats counter that mere absence of a certificate is insufficient to prove that the felon has not earned restoration of his voting rights. That, too, will be argued Monday.
In reviewing the lists submitted to them, King County prosecutors applied the method advocated by the GOP in the court case. In at least a couple of cases, prosecutors said, voters produced certificates after the challenge to their registrations were initiated.
Prosecutors did not press challenges against 46 voters on the original lists whose rights, it turned out, had been restored. For 283 of the listed voters, no record of an adult felony conviction could be found. And in 19 cases, the registrations had already been canceled.
Registration forms require voters to attest that their rights are not in abeyance, but registrations generally can be challenged only after they are entered.
The information systems designed to guard against felon registrations are incomplete and ineffective, a problem state officials say should largely be fixed by a new voter database scheduled to go online by Jan. 1.
Knowingly casting an illegal vote is a crime. But several felon voters have said they were unaware they could not vote.
Exactly!
Dead = 1 vote
Felon = 1 vote
1 + 1 = 2 votes
NEW DEMOCRAT MATH
Seems like a social sciences survey of all the felons in the state could add some interesting data--though that too could easily be skewed inaccurately.
What about exit polls? Any data there about felons?
I pray the courts do the right thing. What a hideous excuse of an election!
It won't make any difference if the court calls for a revote or if they pull Gregoire out of the Governors mansion by her scraggly hair. The damage has been done. The Democrats control both houses of the legislature and the Governors office. The legislative session just ended with the biggest tax increase in Washington state history. Sixty cents a pack on cigarettes, two bucks more for a liter of booze. They re-instated the *death tax* for estates over two million. They added nine cents a gallon on gasoline over 4 years starting with 3 cents in July giving us one of the highest gas taxes in the country. A tonnage fee on cars and trucks. The gas and tonnage fees are for roads and bridges, etc. but most of the projects are on the western side of the state.
Some bills were out of committee, passed both houses and were signed by Gregoire in less than 24 hours, in violation of the public comment period required by law. Some people traveled all the way across the state (400 miles) to testify and when they got there (Olympia) they were told that there was no more time for them to speak. Ofcourse the lobbists were allowed to speak first and for as long as they wanted. They changed the rules so no super majority was necessary, only a simple majority. Just what the Repubs in the Senate want to do but are too damn gutless to do.
There isn't a prayer that Congress would allow eastern WA to split into another state. It would mean 2 more Republican Senators which means they would almost have to make Washington DC a state to get two more Demoncrats for balance.
May God strike the theiving b*****ds dead.
May God strike the theiving b*****ds dead.
Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel :)
Well .. my interpretation is that Section 34 only says the Legislature has to write the laws which govern the recall.
I don't see anything about having to "impeach" the Gov. - or any involvement by the Legislature at all.
I guess the first thing will be to just wait until the case goes to court and see what the outcome will be.
Then find somebody who would be willing to champion the recall drive - maybe a good right-wing radio station or TV station. You'll need somebody who can provide either the money or the drive. We had both in CA. A radio person drive the story and a local congress person who donated the fee to file the recall petition.
It's a lot of work - but if you search FR - you should find a lot of the recall threads still around. You might find some very helpful information about how to organize, etc. Your military obligation may not allow you to be that involved - and I'd check with superiors before doing so anyway.
I thought there was something recently about some problem with the budget .. I don't remember all the details, but I thought people were upset about some changes to the budget or something. I don't remember what they used for Davis, but it wasn't complicated at all.
Good luck!!
See #36
That would be a laugh... an exit poll asking the voter if he or she has been convicted of a felony. There'd be a lot of exit poll workers smacked in the face!
True! I didn't think it likely after I'd written it. LOL.
The numbers show that about 1/8 of felons who vote vote GOP. (Probably Enron types from force of habit) That means that when we subtract this number and discount it against the rest we have a pretty solid net plus of 75% of felon votes for the evil donkey.
Hmmmm.
I hope this gets rubbed into the craw of all the traitorous liberals West of the Cascades!
Greedy power mongering idiots.
The folks that live east of Lake Washington in King County are so sick and tired of the County Commissioners (who are mostly Seattle commies) dictating to them that they would like to create a new county called *Cascadia*. This would reduce the size of the existing King County down to the greater Seattle area.
I (an eastern WA resident) are all for them and hope that they persevere and prevail. Just as I wish that it were possible to separate eastern WA into a new state. Alas, that is a practicable impossibility.
As long as it is possible for vote fraud to take place...it will.
So if someone breaks the law they can claim immunity from prosecution simply by statoing they were unaware of the law?
I don't think so.
I lived in Spokane about 10 years.
I heartily agree.
Thx
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