[EL] in-person voter fraud Washington 2004 follow up

[Goldfeder, Jerry H.]

Justin's work is thorough and comprehensive. Anyone involved in addressing the allegations of fraud, "massive" or otherwise, would do well to replicate his work, bringing it up to date. Use of facts on the ground is obviously the best way of combating polemical broadsides.

Jerry H. Goldfeder
Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
212 806 5857
917 680 3132
jgoldfeder at stroock.com
www.stroock.com/goldfeder

From: Justin Levitt [mailto:levittj at lls.edu]
Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2011 01:58 PM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu <law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] in-person voter fraud Washington 2004 follow up

I'd also be interested in the answer to Rick's question.

I spent the 2007 winter holiday (sigh) looking at every single allegation of fraud<http://www.brennancenter.org/page/-/Democracy/Analysis%20of%20Crawford%20Allegations.pdf> cited in the Crawford briefs to the Supreme Court.  In all of the spilled ink -- covering a time period spanning 400 million votes in general elections alone -- I found a total of ten cases where attempts at impersonation fraud were even alleged.  One attempt was definitively thwarted.  One involved fraud by a pollworker (tough to stop no matter what kind of ID is legally required) and another involved a fraudulent photo ID (again, requiring ID doesn't stop the fake ID).   The other seven -- including the single Washington vote Rick mentions -- were unresolved allegations that might have been real cases, or might have been clerical error.  And I've never heard of any further investigation of those seven, one way or another.  But I'd welcome any follow-up.

I discussed the Stevens footnote -- and a few other commitments to truthiness rather than truth -- here<http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/archives/just_the_facts/>.  And reports on the case that perpetuated the truthiness, here<http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/archives/crawford_just_the_facts_ii/>.

Justin

On 7/31/2011 10:37 AM, Rick Hasen wrote:
In Crawford v. Marion County, Justice Stevens plurality opinion contains this in a portion of a footnote:

While the brief indicates that the record evidence of in-person fraud was overstated because much of the fraud was actually absentee ballot fraud or voter registration fraud, there remain scattered instances of in-person voter fraud. For example, after a hotly contested gubernatorial election in 2004, Washington conducted an investigation of voter fraud and uncovered 19 “ghost voters.� Borders v. King Cty., No. 05–2–00027–3 (Super. Ct. Chelan Cty., Wash., June 6, 2005) (verbatim report of unpublished oral decision), 4 Election L. J. 418, 423 (2005). After a partial investigation of the ghost voting, one voter was confirmed to have committed in-person voting fraud. Le & Nicolosi, Dead Voted in Governor’s Race, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan. 7, 2005, p. A1.

Putting aside that the brief cites only a single instance of possible in-person voter fraud (hardly massive), the evidence for this appears to be a single sentence in the Le & Nicolosi article<http://www.seattlepi.com/default/article/Dead-voted-in-governor-s-race-1163612.php#page-1>:

The P-I review found eight people who died weeks before absentee ballots were mailed out, between Oct. 13 and 15, but were credited with voting in King County. Among them was an 81-year-old Seattle woman who died in August but is recorded as having voted at the polls.

Did anyone ever follow up to see what happened with this 81-year old woman?  Many of these cases turn out to be someone signing on the wrong line.  Did anyone ever track down the poll book to see if someone signed the woman's name?

Thanks for any leads.




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Justin Levitt
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