I like to think we live in a state and county that's relatively immune from voter fraud. We use paper ballots and vote by mail in the privacy of our homes. No long lines, no intimidation at the polling place, no electioneering, and we can take all the time we need to to make up our minds.
Well, the Republicans have figured out a way to pee in our figurative punchbowl. Sidle carefully past Donald Trump's hairpiece to see what they've come up with now.
(And please read on even if you are one of the approximately 317,000,000 people who are not so fortunate as to live in King County, for a special note at the end.)
According to a story at the KOMO News web site and picked up by Publicola, Republican volunteers are going door to door in east King County offering to collect people's ballots:
It was Wednesday night that two men showed up at Steve McDonald's door to let him know they'd take his ballot to be counted.
"It was Halloween. There's a lot of tricksters around the neighborhood. I was thinking it was a joke, but they had a very serious look on their face," McDonald said.
The men offered to mail his ballot for him. As it turns out, McDonald had already voted, so the men left. Still, he said it was an odd experience.
"After someone leaves, you're kind of like, did I just get bamboozled? I didn't get bamboozled because they didn't take my ballot, but they sure knew a lot of information about me," he said.
This was apparently not a Halloween prank. Publicola reported that the GOP gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna's campaign mailed out an offer to pay $10 an hour for a 12 hour shift to collect ballots.
KOMO is more charitable in their reporting than I would be. But let's be charitable for a moment. From the outside one ballot looks like another. It's green and white, with the voter's address and signature on it and a bar code presumably used by the Elections Board to sort the ballots in some way, perhaps by precinct. There's no indication that the voter is a Democrat, a Republican, an independent or a sasquatch.
But wait . . . the name and address is on the outside of the ballot envelope. What's to stop the King County GOP, once they have these ballots in hand, from comparing the names and addresses to a Democratic mailing list (available to anyone for a relatively small sum) and separating out anyone on the list, or turning them in after the deadline? Or shredding large numbers of ballots from traditionally heavy Democratic neighborhoods?
Yes, they could just be trying to collect ballots in largely Republican neighborhoods, and there are large swatches of them from Bothell down to Renton. That's the charitable view. But given the GOP's propensity for attempting to win by any means necessary in other states, I'm not inclined to be charitable.
This should go without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway: Never trust your ballot to any third party except the mailman. Ballots are considered valid if postmarked by next Tuesday, Election Day. Or better yet, drop off your ballot at an official drop box or elections van. Click here for the list of locations. Then do yourself a favor: On Tuesday or (preferably) Monday, check the Ballot Tracker to make sure your ballot was received by King County Elections and will count. If your ballot has not been received, call the Elections Board at 206-296-VOTE for further instructions. Better you should do this Monday than Tuesday; King County Elections will be a bit preoccupied on Tuesday.
And for those of you who don't live in King County, take this message as a warning. With two states already doing their entire election process by mail and numerous others allowing permanent absentee and similar voting processes, your state or your county could be hit by something like this. In fact I'm sure that even as I type this that someone in predominantly blue states affected by Hurricane Sandy are thinking up ways to screw Democrats out of their votes.
And once again, Republicans in Washington have a tradition of being a bit more moderate than their national counterparts (guys like Doc Hastings notwithstanding). I am not going to flat out say the King County GOP is trying to steal ballots. They may (as they claim) be concerned about the election and are just trying to get every Republican vote they can muster, since King County is key to their guy being elected governor. There's no law against it.
But, in the words of some immortal philosopher or another, "Trust everybody, but cut the cards."