Hundreds Of Voters Angry Over Registration Challenges
The State Republican party filed challenges to more than 1,900 registrations saying that the voters appear to have listed businesses, post office boxes, or self storage facilities as their addresses in violation of state law.
When the challenges were submitted on Oct. 26, Republicans called them "iron clad".
But problems emerged when the county notified voters of the challenges. One entire apartment house in Seattle's Belltown appeared to be on the list erroneously. It also appeared that some people with home businesses were challenged. And others were just plain mistakes.
Linda and Steve Meuter got challenges delivered to their home along with a challenge to the registration of their daughter. They live in a single family home in Kirkland.
Steve is angry, saying the letter arrived days before the general election. He suspects it's an attempt by Republicans to try to create the image of election problems in an attempt to defeat County Executive Ron Sims.
He wondered if the trick might work: "How many of those people are just going to say 'To hell with it.' They're not going to vote. They're not going to screw with it. And I think that's their intention, they could have sent something like this out two months ago."
His wife Linda added: "They have no right to challenge my integrity as a voter and make me jump through hoops in 48 hours to try and prove myself. I have lived in this community since 1980."
The Meuters are among 300 people who have called King County elections to protest.
One of those answering the phones is Anne-Marie Williams: "They are like miffed, very angry. We just have to apologize."
Republicans called the challenges iron-clad, and still insist that most of the 1,900 names submitted are valid.
Party chairman Chris Vance says: "The focus shouldn't be on the work we did, the focus should be on the fact King County didn't do this work. We think the overwhelming majority of our work is accurate."
Vance says the county is required to keep accurate voter registration records and the party felt compelled to act because of the failures of the election department.
One of those wrongly challenged is a Republican, Scott Cavanaugh. He called Vance to complain about his own party: "He said he had a 90 percent accuracy, and I explained he might want to lift up his expectations on error rates. 10 percent seemed a little excessive to me."
Late Friday, the GOP notified King County it was withdrawing its challenges to 140 voters, including the Meuter family and the Cavanaugh family.
King County officials say if you were challenged you should still vote a provisional ballot. It may still be counted.
To see the list of 140 people whose challenge was withdrawn you can go to this link. It is an MS Word Document.