GOP: King Co. ballots invalid
Poll worker reports improper processing

BRAD SHANNON THE OLYMPIAN   06 January 2005

State Republicans attempted Wednesday to buttress their case for a new election, claiming that ballot-handling errors in King County allowed hundreds or thousands of provisional ballots to be counted before they were validated in the Nov. 2 election. 
 
State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance said election workers directly fed some provisional ballots given at poll sites to people who show up at the wrong precinct into poll site counting machines. He said an election worker reported witnessing 300 such ballots being fed into machines during vote counting in King County.

The accusations are part of an ongoing dispute over results in the Nov. 2 election, which gave Democrat Christine Gregoire a 129-vote victory over Republican Dino Rossi after the final recount.

Secretary of State Sam Reed certified Gregoire as the winner one week ago, and the Legislature is scheduled to certify the results a final time Tuesday, the second day of the legislative session.

Democrats expect some kind of protest to be lodged by House Republicans, who say election errors like those in King County erode public trust and make it necessary to call a new election something legislative Democrats have refused to do.

"We are building our case, gathering our data. This is a powerful piece. ... We'll have something definitive to say soon," Vance said Wednesday after a news conference in Seattle. "I'll tell you this: The Legislature should not certify Christine Gregoire as governor. We now know as fact many illegal ballots were cast."

Temporary election worker Joe O'Donnell was part of a canvassing team and he "personally saw about 300 cases of provisional ballots that went straight through the (voting) machine when they were doing the canvassing," Vance said.

Vance did not say whether O'Donnell tried to stop the practice.

King County election officials did not return telephone calls Wednesday, but election supervisor Bill Huennekens told The Seattle Times that an unknown number of such ballots were fed into machines prematurely.

State Elections Director Nick Handy with the Secretary of State's Office said he is aware of the problem. But he said such a practice, though not desirable, does happen in most elections and in most counties because voters don't always follow directions at the poll sites.

Asked if he was concerned, Handy said: "I'm not sure I know how to answer that. What I have is a county telling me it occurred at some level. It was incidental and isolated. It was a combination of election worker and voter error."

Vance's claim of hundreds or thousands of illegal ballots could not be verified.

"What happens inevitably in some locations, and not just in King, the voter is given the ballot, they fill it out and they walk over and put it in" the voting box, Handy said. Sometimes it occurs because a distracted or busy poll worker can't get to it or stop it, according to Handy. "They'll say it happened but didn't happen very much."

Both Handy and state Democrats were skeptical that the provisional ballots problem would have affected the outcome of the race.

That's because about 94 percent of documented provisional ballots were eventually deemed valid and counted in King County. As a result, only a small percentage would have been illegal ballots and these would have split perhaps 3-2 in favor of Gregoire.

"The fact is, this would require thousands and thousands of votes to change the outcome of this election," Democratic spokeswoman Kirstin Brost said. "All the Republicans have done is make wild accusation after wild accusation. They've been disproven one after another."

Until now, efforts to force a revote have failed to uncover substantial problems with the vote. But Vance and Rossi campaign spokeswoman Mary Lane said the new findings bolster their case.

The provisional ballot issues could become a very important part of their legal case, if they resort to court as part of a formal election contest, they said.

In the meantime, Gregoire is planning to be sworn in Wednesday as governor.