The Republicans of Washington State have not gotten over the loss of the governorship by a mere 129 votes in an election that seesawed in the vote count and was finally settled only in the state supreme court. In the recent election of November 8 final results have yet to be announced, and the Republicans are once again challenging some 200 votes.

Gregory Roberts writes of the to-do

It's an early skirmish in what the GOP promises will be a long and bitter war, a conflict that breaks sharply along the political divide, with both Republicans and Democrats claiming the moral high ground.

"It's perfectly logical to see that we're tying to prevent vote fraud," state GOP Chairman Chris Vance said.

His Democratic counterpart, Paul Berendt, countered, "The Republicans have been fighting to take away the right of people to vote."

That perfectly limns the positions—

• Republicans: We're preventing vote fraud.
• Democrats: We're protecting the right to vote.

The Republican effort

This past summer, when Republican precinct captains in King County looked over their neighborhood voter lists for the upcoming city and county elections, they discovered numerous errors, Vance said. Thus was born the Voter Registration Integrity Project, headed by county GOP Vice Chairwoman Lori Sotelo, a strictly homegrown affair that's the first of its kind in Washington state, Vance said.

Sotelo applied computer technology to county voter data bases, and in mid-October the GOP announced the discovery of thousands of duplicate registrations (double registrations are not cause for challenges of voter eligibility).1

Republican researchers also looked up mailbox services and storage units in the Yellow Pages and compared the addresses with their databases to ferret out phony residences, Vance said. On Oct. 26, Sotelo formally challenged 1,944 registrations on the grounds that the voters had not provided valid residence addresses, as required by state law.

And that's just the beginning, Vance has said.

But the GOP has not claimed any deliberate fraud by voters.

The Democratic position

Indeed, Democratic politicians quickly accused the Republicans of attempting to scare voters away from the polls. And Democratic lawyers claim the GOP challenges are invalid because they do not specify the true residences of the voters in question, as required by state law. The county Canvassing Board is holding hearings to decide the issue.

"We're not going to let this slide," Berendt said. "If we don't nip this in the bud, they are going to be harassing innocent voters for years to come."

His party is called "democratic" for a reason, Berendt said, and defending the rights of all legitimate voters is one of its core values.
....

"What they are aiming for is partisan advantage, and not voter integrity."

Berendt acknowledged he's got a partisan dog in the fight as well.

"Do Republican efforts to depress voter turnout hurt the Democratic Party? You bet."

Does joining the Democratic Party lower IQ?

The specifics of the Republican challenges will be heard by the King County Canvassing Board and their legitimacy decided. But however the Board rules, the Democrats will be losers.

While there is no question that Republicans will disenfranchise Democratic-leaning minorities at every turn, supporting the inaccuracy of voter roles should not be a position of either party.

When the Republicans initiated their "Voter Registration Integrity Project," the Democrats should have immediately countered with a "Registration Verification and Assistance Project." The purpose of the Democratic effort would be "to verify (and help correct when necessary) the registrations of all those wishing to vote to ensure that the registrant's vote will count." This would have taken the wind out of Republican sails. But it would also have made clear that Democrats also support accurate voter roles while trying to assure that everyone has the right to vote. To behave in any other way is simply a turn-off for independent voters.

Likewise, to cast the matter as oppression of the minority vote is a turn-off for majority voters. If the Democrats truly want to help minority voters, they should be checking registrations before the Republicans can even get there. They should not allow them to lead on the issue.

Excuses, excuses

At the end of his article Roberts offers a dose of cynicism from "an academic expert"—

... New York University law professor Richard Pildes, said ballot security programs are invariably influenced by partisan considerations.

"No one does this for good-government reasons in the abstract," he said. "It's the political parties that usually take the lead in that process, and it's no surprise that they focus on ways that they think will enhance their partisan self-interest."

This may be true of the political parties themselves, but I doubt it's true of the American electorate. But reporters have taken to injecting this sort of cynicism into their reporting quite regularly (which is material for another post). It is a way of excusing the politicians.

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