Richard suggests that elections officials are registering homeless
people as a way to control or influence election outcomes. "Where is
the payoff, and who benefits."

This seems far too cynical to me.  The "payoff" is the good feeling
that elections officials have by making it possible for an obviously
disempowered and underrepresented portion of the citizenry to be able
to excercise the franchise.  This seems to be a little-d democratic
issue, not a partisan one.

Thus, the answer to the question "Who benefits?" is  this: the
citizens who were previously unable to vote.

It's unfair to premise such an inquiry without also asking whether
this is good public policy, because then you've prejudged the answer
to be a partisan one.  *Every* action does not have to boil down to
partisan gains and losses.  I suppose this is inevitable when we have
such close elections, but in this case, I think the simple answer is
the best one.

On 4/23/05, richard@shepardlawoffice.com <richard@shepardlawoffice.com> wrote:

In connection with the microscopic inquiry into the 2004 Washington
gubernatorial election one conservative blogger from the Puget Sound
discovered what may best be called the Precinct 1823 problem.  

Briefly stated, Precinct 1823, located in downtown Seattle, includes the
address of the King County Elections Department.  According to records
obtained by the blogger (unrefuted, as far as I know) 527 voters in that
precinct show their residential addresses as the same address as the
Elections Department, thus invoking the fiction that they live at an address
occupied by a county office.  The official explanation for this anomaly is
that these people are homeless, and have as much right to vote as anybody
else. 

Assuming without deciding that is good public policy the question then
becomes, if these people are recognized homeless, how do we know or verify
where they really live, or, for that matter, who they really are?  Yet 527
is more then 4 times the Democratic governor's margin of victory.  (And I
still can't get my brain around the concept that the 3rd count is any more
or less legitimate than the 1st or 2nd) 

The obvious question is why would this sort of voter registration sloppiness
be condoned?  Where is the payoff, and who benefits?