11/05/2005

Associated Press

King County elections officials scrambled Friday to reassure hundreds of voters who received letters notifying them that their voter registrations had been challenged.

All 1,944 challenges were filed Oct. 26 by Lori Sotelo, senior vice chairwoman for King County Republicans. The challenges, alleging invalid residential addresses, triggered notification letters signed by Dean Logan, county elections director.

Logan said any voter who received a letter could update his or her address on Saturday, either by phone or in person during extended hours at the county elections office, or, if the address is valid, simply vote a challenged ballot in Tuesday's general election.

Challenged ballots cast Tuesday — or already mailed in — will be considered at a postelection challenge hearing, he said. The burden of proof at such a hearing is on the challenger, county elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan noted.

"The most important message is: people should not be afraid to vote on election day," Egan said.

County offices were flooded with phone calls about the letters, and the election office set up a hotline and announced 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday office hours.

"We have heard from people who live on houseboats, above storage facilities and in homes that were built 80 years ago," Logan said. "We realize this challenge has caused confusion and angered many voters who have told us they live at a valid residence."

Sotelo, who rescinded 140 of the challenges Friday, told KING-TV, "We expect that this is going to be a close election and we would like to be sure if there are challenges to be made that they be made before election day."

"Do I think it was partisan? Yes I do," County Executive Ron Sims told KING-TV. Sims is seeking re-election in Tuesday's election, facing Republican challenger David Irons.

King County Republicans "wanted to accuse us at the last moment of not having our voter registration records clean," Sims added.

State GOP Chairman Chris Vance said party research indicated the challenged voters were "illegally registered to vote at private mailboxes and storage facilities. That is illegal. We did this as part of the ongoing effort ... not to repeat the fiasco of 2004," when county records were an issue in the thrice-counted governor's race between Republican Dean Rossi and Democrat Christine Greqoire.

As to the timing of this challenge, Vance said, "We did it as soon as we had the information available. ... We are exercising the only legal option we had."

Did the effort target Democrats?

"Absolutely not. People don't register by party in Washington state," Vance said, noting that the challenges were "all over the county," in Republican strongholds as well as areas considered Democratic.

"I don't think there's an easy way of doing that" — targeting members of one party — said Sims spokesman Sandeep Kaushik. "Some precincts are obviously more Democratic than others."

A recent independent audit gave the King County elections office credit for significant progress toward fixing problems that surfaced during last year's hotly contested race for governor.

The audit, commissioned by the King County Council, was handled by Houston-based Election Center, and Strategica, an Issaquah company. It found no evidence of fraud.

King County took heat during Republicans' legal challenge of Gregoire's 129-vote victory in a hand recount of the governor's race.

County elections officials acknowledged many errors, including counting the votes of dead people and felons whose voting rights had not been restored. Other blunders included overlooking more than 100 mail-in ballots until it was too late to count them.

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King County elections hotline: 206-205-5686.