Thousands on voter list aren’t alive

A statewide computer sweep to clean up voter rolls has identified thousands of people who may be ineligible to vote, including 1,463 apparently dead voters in Snohomish County alone.

From here to Walla Walla, state elections officials discovered 36,000 matching names for voters who appear to be registered in two places. That could affect registrations for about 18,000 people, officials said.

Another 11,500 registered voters were listed as dead by the state Department of Health.

All the names were flagged for further scrutiny as part of the state’s new $6 million voter registration database, said Pam Floyd, manager of the database project.

The sweep was done Jan. 11, and the state’s 39 counties immediately began analyzing the problem registrations.

“I would have expected the number to be higher, bringing in 39 separate databases,” Floyd said.

It isn’t clear whether any of the voters registered in two counties tried to cast more than one ballot – or in the case of the dead registered voters, any ballots at all, she said.

“We haven’t done the research to determine if they’re casting ballots in two counties,” said Carolyn Diepenbrock, Snohomish County elections manager. “We’re not the investigative authority, and right now we’re trying to make sure our database has the highest level of integrity.”

Snohomish County immediately canceled the voter registrations for the more than 1,400 dead people the state told them about, said Wendy Mauch, Snohomish County elections supervisor.

The more difficult work is scrutinizing people who appear to be registered to vote in different counties.

County elections workers are comparing signatures, names, birth dates and where a voter last cast a ballot to determine whether the names belong to the same or different people.

“We’re capturing all information and lining everything up,” Floyd said. “Now we can see both records complete, side by side.”

How many registrations have been canceled from county to county isn’t yet clear because no reports have been prepared, state and local officials said.

The number of duplicate entries is about 1 percent of the 3.5 million active registered voters in the state.

The state began flagging duplicate entries as early as 2000, using voting rolls provided twice a year by each county. Paper reports were then sent to each county for comparison.

The new real-time voter database immediately shows if someone is registered to vote elsewhere in the state.

“Probably the biggest benefit we get from the statewide database is that things happen much more quickly than in the past,” Floyd said.

Errors in voting rolls are inevitable because people make mistakes, Floyd said.

“It’s not the answer to all the issues, but it is a big step in right direction,” Floyd said. “We expect it to get better.”

More monthly sweeps are planned for duplicate and deceased voters. In March, officials plan to create the first comprehensive list of felons whose voting rights are in question.

The workload to scrutinize all these lists might force Snohomish County to spend money to hire another elections worker, Diepenbrock said.

To reduce the workload and save taxpayers money, officials ask voters to update their registrations, she said.

“Putting a change of address into the post office does not change our records,” she said.

The purge of voting rolls by state and county officials so far has not attempted to identify potentially improper voting by people who receive ballots at places other than their registered addresses.

A computer examination of Snohomish County’s voting rolls by The Herald found thousands of ballots being sent – and even e-mailed – to voters around the world.

Hundreds of those ballots went to addresses in California and Arizona, including to people who have sold their homes in Snohomish County. State law still allows them to legally vote.

Correcting voter information is as simple as a phone call to the auditor’s office, Diepenbrock said.

“If voters would participate and be more proactive about that, it would be a far more efficient system,” she said.

Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.

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