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

[Thad Hall]

If I can offer two comments that might be helpful here.  First, if you look at polling data, most people do not worry about in person voter fraud.  Instead, they are more worried about absentee voting fraud.  (There will be a VTP working paper on this in the next couple of months).  Second, in the aftermath of Washington 2004, the state changed the training requirements for examining absentee ballot signatures.  In talking with several clerks in the state, it is quite clear that most people do not know how to conduct signature comparisons, which the Washington State Police have noted in training sessions is an art, and not an easy art to learn or implement (especially by temp workers comparing several hundred signatures a day.

This part of the authentication process seems to be left out of voter ID discussions.


Thad Hall
Associate Professor, University of Utah

Sent from my iPad

On Jul 31, 2011, at 12:38 PM, Vince Leibowitz <vince.leibowitz at gmail.com> wrote:

> I really do not believe that lawmakers and voter ID advocates who cry "fraud" in many instances like the 81-year-old woman realize how rampant clerical and voter error--like signing on the wrong line is.
> 
> In 2010, when we worked with Farouk Shami, who was running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Texas, the media had a field day calling him a liar for saying he voted in the 2008 general. After we spent several thousand dollars to pay county employees overtime and rent a forklift so the county elections office could unearth the original sign-in sheets from a ballot box high up in a warehouse, he was found to have simply signed on the wrong line. So, his daughter, who was in Palestine (not the city in Texas) and didn't vote by mail in that election is recorded as having voted. Even though we unearthed the original record, when last I checked late last year, the voter record was still in error in the state electronic database. 
> 
> If it can happen to the guy who was smart enough to invent the CHI Iron (if you don't know what that is, your wife/girlfriend will), it can happen to anyone. 
> 
> Vince Leibowitz
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> The Dawn Group
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> 
> On Jul 31, 2011, at 12:37 PM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> 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:
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Rick Hasen
>> Professor of Law and Political Science
>> UC Irvine School of Law
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