Backstory
here,
here,
here,
here.
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 (local Seattle liberal blogger extrodinare) and Stefan Sharkansky (local Seattle evil Republican blogger extrodinaire) 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 (high King County GOP muckity-muck) 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).
As Goldy pointed out, most of these were 2-1 votes (Democratic King County Councilmember Dow Constantine and Director of King County Records and Elections Dean Logan, rejecting Sotelo's challenge; Deputy Prosecutor Dan Satterberg accepting). The Constantine/Logan rationale was that Ms. Sotelo needed clear and convincing proof that the voters didn't live at their registered address - and while Constantine conceded that many of the voters probably didn't live in their storage facility or in a PO Box - Sotelo didn't provide the clear and convincing proof that they
didn't (and the onus is on them).
As Goldy also pointed out, the story that best illustrated the problem with just assuming that no one can live at a PO Box (which was the central assertion of the challenges, and the "proof" that Mr. Satterberg was willing to rely on to accept over 90% of the challenges) is the story of David Combs. He is homeless, lives in his car, and when it gets really cold, he has been known to let himself in to the PO Box facility (he has a key, and is trusted by the owner) so that he can warm himself up. In this case, isn't the PO Box really his residence? By registering where he actually lives (instead at the closest City Hall or other public building, as the Republicans would have him do) isn't he actually doing the County a service by precisely precincting himself? Mr. Satterberg could not bring himself to recognize that there are times when a PO Box may be the best address for someone to use as their residence, and was the lone vote for accepting Sotelo's challenge of Mr. Combs' voter registration.
The only area where all three of the board members agreed, was in the case of people who were registered at storage facilities. It was the case with many of these facilities that there was a resident manager (or Sotelo wasn't able to prove that there wasn't a resident manager), and Sotelo had not shown with clear and convincing evidence that the voter wasn't the resident manager. In these cases all three of the board members voted to reject the challenge as too shoddy for acceptance.
Long story short - Dems aren't happy because these challenges shouldn't have been heard in the first place (and those who testified on their own behalf were the ones most likely to lose their vote and have the challenge accepted), as the Republicans didn't meet minimum thresholds to file the challenges; Republicans are mad because 70% of their challenges were thrown out. Nothing has really be resolved, and I'm sure we'll see more of the same from our friends at the vote-suppressing GOP in the future. One more thing we need to keep our eyes on.
One thing we can do to help make sure that this doesn't happen again is to pressure the Republican Prosecutor Norm Maleng to investigate Ms. Sotelo for perjury. She signed 1,944 affidavits "under penalty of perjury" that she had "personal knowledge" that these voters weren't eligable to vote - and she had no personal knowledge of any of these people. Her interens and volunteers did a database check (a bad one at that), and didn't do any real research until after the challenges were signed and filed with the County.