Washblog

Sims wants Vote-By-Mail

Ron Sims has seen the light.

Possibly as early as next fall, King County would go to an all-mail voting system -- the nation's largest -- under a plan announced by County Executive Ron Sims Tuesday.

"The public has spoken: They like the convenience of all-mail balloting," said Sims, noting that more than 70 percent of the county's voters now cast absentee ballots.

The wingnuts would like us to believe that Vote-By-Mail decreases turnout and increases fraud, among other tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories. I suggest that the nay-sayers take a look at a recent survey done in Oregon about voter attitudes five years after their state's full implementation of Vote-By-Mail:

It appears that voters in Oregon have retained their initial attachment to Vote-By-Mail, and this support varies only slightly across demographic and partisan groups with the electorate. A majority of all subcategories favor Vote-By-Mail over the more traditional polling place. The consequences of Vote-By-Mail on the nature of the electorate is one of the most hotly debated aspects of this electoral reform, but this survey suggests that neither of the two parties have much to lose or gain from Vote-By-Mail. Instead, the groups that reported that they vote more often under Vote-By-Mail are simply a set of individuals - women, young people, and the disables and retirees - who have found it more convenient to vote under a system that does not require them to be physically present on "the first Tuesday after the first Monday".

Oh, we're not finished with you, Mr. Maleng

The Stranger's blog (SLOG) reminds us that Lori Sotelo's challenge is just a repeat of similarly sloppy, unethical, illegal, and reprehensible tactics from Ohio.  The Ohio GOP lost their frivolous challenges just as the King County GOP lost theirs, and for similarly sloppy, lazy work.  Not that they care, of course - they don't care about the actual voter rolls (as long as they keep getting smaller and have less Democrats, that is).

Interestingly, indictment was mentioned in the Ohio case as well.  Now, you've all heard by now that soon-to-be-former Prosecutor Norm Maleng has decided to toe the party line and parrot their tortured claims of "serious problems" with the voter rolls.  Incredibly, during his press conference he announced he would not prosecute Lori Sotelo (who very clearly broke the law) because he feels she had "no criminal intent", but at the same time announced he would pursue prosecution against voters registered at non-traditional addresses!  Even more incredibly, he's ignoring his own department's advice in making these decisions.

Well, it's obvious now that Maleng is a newborn Republican party hack, who needs to step up, or be shown the door.  I haven't posted for a couple days, but I haven't stopped, and we're not done with Mr. Maleng.  The first step is to continue our petition.  He needs to hear from the people that we won't stand for this partisan nonsense.  Next, write him and let him know how you feel about his actions regarding this travesty.  Last, but most importantly, write letters to the editor about it.  We can't just go silent and hope that someone else will do something about it. 

We're not finished with Norm Maleng.  It's time to run someone against him who stands for integrity and non-partisan focus on fair prosecution of crimes in King County - just as Norm himself used to. 

In Good Faith?

Maleng say's he won't prosecute according to this mornings PI:
he won't prosecute Sotelo for perjury. "She acted in good faith, withdrawing 178 challenges filed in error." He also said that "That law [the state law on address challenges -- and cited by Logan at Monday's Canvassing Board meeting -- that requires the challenger to supply the voter's actual home address, something Sotelo did not do] shouldn't govern the type of challenge Sotelo filed, which targeted the voter's initial qualifications. According to the PI he will seek a legal opinion from his, cronies er, the Attorney General Rob McKenna and Secretary of State Sam Reed, both Republicans.

This all ties in well with the formation of a PAC for the Judiciary. If the republicans [and by republicans I do mean the BIAW and such] can’t win with an even playing field they are going to tip the field in there favor regardless of the intent of the law. Sign Switzersblog’s petition. We must use this as a rallying cry - No Voter Disenfranchisement!

Sims to Maleng: Prosecute Lori Sotelo

Ron Sims today called on Norm Maleng to initiate an investigation of perjury by Lori Sotelo in the case of the nearly 2,000 voter registration challenges she filed with no personal knowledge of the voters' actual eligibility. 

"The Canvassing Board made the right decision," Sims said. "The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, and what Ms. Sotelo did was an abuse of the challenge process. By signing an oath ‘under penalty of perjury' in which she swore she had ‘personal knowledge' that hundreds of King County voters were incorrectly registered – at least 178 of which were subsequently withdrawn after evidence came to light that the voters in question were correctly registered – she willfully and needlessly abused the voter challenge process. This was a deliberate attempt to intimidate voters and dissuade them from voting, and ought to be investigated and then prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

"The sad fact is that the vast majority of the voters – more than 1,000 – challenged by Ms. Sotelo ended up not voting in this election. In that sense, Ms. Sotelo and other party officials involved in her effort can say, ‘Mission Accomplished.' Unfortunately, our nation has a long and well documented history of systematic efforts by some groups and parties to disenfranchise large numbers of people, or alternately to intimidate them into not exercising their right to vote, and this effort appears to fall squarely in that tradition.

As I said last night, damn straight!  Get this petition to your friends and get them to sign it.  We need to stand with Ron Sims and Larry Phillips in demanding that Norm Maleng do his job!  Time is short, so let's get this ball really rolling today!

Damn straight!

Winter Storm '05 is bearing down on us, with its life-altering one to three inches of snow (unless it doesn't), and I'm enjoying, tremendously, the GOP's attempt to spin Lori Sotelo's utter failure to do her job into a win for them.

I'm going to say it again.  Lori Sotelo, liar, cheat and bully, failed at her task.  Unless her task was to be exposed as a careless person who is willing to perjure herself and sacrifice the rights of others for base partisan gain.  (okay, she was so sloppy she even failed at the base partisan gain.  Poor Lori.)

Tomorrow, Norm Maleng is holding a press conference to outline the procedure for deciding what action is required for the last unresolved challenged registrations.  One hopes he would mention the 1944 cases of perjury Lori Sotelo should be charged with, but I'm not holding my breath.  As we've known, it'll be up to us to pressure him to do his job and uphold the laws - click here and sign the petition if you haven't already.  Send it to your friends if you have.

Before we go to the jump, let me just say that Anonym deserves major, major kudos for his great coverage over the past couple weeks.  He's done yeoman's work, sitting through those boring meetings (I sat through part of one - yeesh!), and giving us solid coverage in a 'just the facts' style.  So, kudos, Anonym!

More after the jump - Dean Logan's statement, and more!

70% of Republican Voter Registration Challenges REJECTED!

I knew that today's Canvass Board meeting was a big deal when I showed up today - there were at least two tv cameras, and 5-6 microphones recording the action at the Canvass Board table.  The true sign that this was a really big story was the fact that Goldy from Horsesass and Stefan Sharkansky from Soundpolitics were both seated a couple aisles in front of me.  Of course, because I like pain so much, I stayed through the entire meeting - Goldy on the other hand (showing why he is the local liberal blogking) scampered early and scooped me.  Oh well!

The big story of the meeting was that 70% of the challenges issued by Ms. Sotelo were rejected!  (133 of the challenges were rejected, 57 accepted - these were only the challenged voters who actually voted in the 11/8 election - the rest of the 1,944 challenged voter registrations will be heard at another time).

It depends what the meaning of "is" is

“We made some mistakes. We’re sorry about that.” --  with those words, State Republican Chair Chris Vance expects that his party's legal and PR problems will just disappear into the mist.

Continuing the extension of their newly discovered moral equivalency, Vance and the GOP's attorneys are pulling out all the stops to avoid any repercussions for their irresponsible, thuggish, lying, cheating actions when they tryied to deny the right to vote to nearly 2000 people.  (click here for complete coverage)  In this article from the Federal Way Mirror, Vance claims (incorrectly) that the GOP doesn't need to provide the voters' actual address as required by law.  Parsing the law far beyond its actual meaning, he's decided "the actual residence must be verified only if the challenge is over the person's residential address.  Voters who registered a post office or personal mail box as their residential address have 'given us no address at all,' Vance said."

The best quote:

He further defended Sotelo and the county Republicans’ challenge. “Making some errors is not the same thing as perjury,” he said.

Bullshit.  That's a pretty damn interesting perspective coming from a party that tried to impeach a Democratic President for perjury.  The bottom line, despite what Chris Vance's fat, lying ass says, is that Lori Sotelo signed 1,944 documents "under penalty of perjury" that she had personal knowledge that voters were illegally registered.  She had no such knowledge.  That is perjury, no matter how many Republican attorneys try to twist the meaning.

Sign the petition - We'll bring it to Norm Maleng, and keep the pressure on him to do his job and prosecute Lori Sotelo for perjury as required by law.  If you've signed it, forward it to others.  We must not let up on this!

And if you want the public to remember how the GOP views their right to vote, write a letter to your local paper.  Then support Senators Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Karen Keiser's legislation to prevent this type of bullying, lying and cheating.

A teachable moment for the GOP

I spent a lot of my Thanksgiving discussing and thinking about the incredibly irresponsible and reprehensible (thanks for that turn of phrase, Dick!) bogus voter registration challenges from the GOP and Lori Sotelo.  (I've created a page to track the story.  It's at my own website, as I can't add pages to Washblog)  It started to click in my mind that this is the leading edge of something larger, and the importance of showing the GOP that there are consequences for their actions.  In other words - they need to be taught.  It's a teachable moment, and we need to seize it.

Before you read on:  Sign the petition for Norm Maleng.  Then tell all your friends to do the same.

The Republican Party of today has apparently decided no laws apply to them.  They feel compelled to act on any and all urges, and are eager to pursue any means to ensure more and more power.  In Ohio and now here in King County, they have decided to try and win elections by challenging voter registrations in Democratic areas.  Lori Sotelo, in her eagerness to cheat voters of the franchise, has now been shown to be a liar, poor manager of volunteers, and bad person - willing to blame those volunteers for her poor decisions and perjurous actions.  What should become of her, and why is it important?

Final Day of King County Challenge Hearings (thank god!)

When I arrived to the hearing on Wednesday, it appeared as if none of the challenged voters were going to appear to defend their ability to vote. This totally bummed me out because these things are only exciting when there is some back and forth. My ears perked up though when I heard the Republicans and the Canvass Board discussing the registration of a Mr. Kim Thayil. “Hmm”, I thought to myself, “that name sure sounds a lot like the name of Soundgardens’ former lead guitarist – could it be that Kim Thayil? Hell, how many Kim Thayils can there be?”

Norm Maleng: Prosecute Sotelo

A lot of digital ink has been spilled on the sad saga of Lori Sotelo, and Anonym has done a great job keeping us up to date on the challenge hearings here, here and here (please recommend today's diary, btw - let's keep this visible!).  Evidence is mounting rapidly that Lori Sotelo never had personal knowledge of any voter's voting eligibility, and this was just a partisan hit job.  It's looking more and more like fraud, intended to disenfranchise voters and score PR points against Ron Sims (like we didn't know that's what it was in the first place, right?

In response to this comment on Anonym's Kos diary yesterday, a petition has been created to put pressure on Norm Maleng to investigate and prosecute Lori Sotelo for her perjury according to RCW 9A.72.040.  Maleng's silence on this matter is starting to seem as though he's willing to overlook her criminal behavior for partisan reasons (Maleng's a Republican, although in the past he's shown a great deal of integrity).  This must not be allowed to stand.

SIGN THE PETITION TODAY

If Republicans want to claim we're "criminalizing politics", I say we're criminalizing criminal behavior.  If they claim we're smearing, I reply she smeared 1944 people, illegally.  If they claim we should be putting our energy towards getting rid of illegal voters, I say they seem to have that MORE than in hand right now - a little too much in hand, in fact.  They should put their energy towards not breaking the law.

It's a matter of the law.  Republicans may disdain perjury as a minor offense, but it remains against the law, and Norm Maleng's job is to prosecute those who break the law.

Do your duty, Norm!