Pierce County investigates voter fraud

Published 9:22 pm Saturday, July 21, 2007

TACOMA – Officials in Pierce County are investigating whether paid canvassers fraudulently filled out hundreds of voter-registration cards before the 2006 election.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Al Rose told a Seattle newspaper on Friday that he expects to conclude the investigation in about a month.

He would not provide details, but said it involves about 400 registration forms that were returned to election officials as undeliverable.

Many of the suspicious registrations used the address of the Tacoma Rescue Mission, a shelter for homeless people. A large amount of mail from the elections office arrived one day last fall addressed to newly registered voters, Rick Shields, a shift manager at the shelter, told the newspaper.

“There were several that were in there that were legitimate” and were picked up by people who either stayed in the shelter or got their mail there, Shields said. The rest were returned as undeliverable.

Those registrations have been flagged so the registrants won’t be allowed to vote unless they prove their identity, Rose said.

Shields said it was clear when the mail arrived that some names were bogus.

“They were like cartoon characters’ names and football players’ names,” he said.

A similar investigation has been ongoing in King County. That probe began after election workers in October spotted apparently forged voter-registration cards among 1,829 that were turned in by a community-organizing group called ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

An ACORN attorney in March gave King County prosecutors the names of three temporary employees he said should be investigated for possible fraud.