 Oct. 12, 2005 Dean Logan's statement in response to Republican allegations of duplicate votersDean Logan, Director of King County Records, Elections and Licensing, was joined by 48 Elections employees at a press conference today where he expressed frustration with Republicans for sitting on information they claim could make King County voter rolls more accurate. In response to Republican claims of duplicate voter registrations, Logan issues the following statement."We've issued countless invitations to the public and the political parties to be part of our open, transparent efforts to improve elections. While the public has responded, those involved in today's media event have shown time and again that they are more interested in political grandstanding than the real work of improving elections. "If they were really serious about helping the process, they would have delivered this information before the voter rolls closed two days ago. Instead they sat on this information for more than two weeks and likely prevented us from addressing any issues in time for the General Election. I still have not received from them a list, a database or a formal challenge of any voter. "We have done a lot of work this year to clean up our voter rolls. This year we've merged duplicate registrations of 9,100 voters and we continue to do this work between elections. In June we launched a massive PR campaign and mailed 1.1 million voters new registration cards and asked voters to partner with us to clean our voter rolls – and they responded. Thousands of voters reported duplication registrations and 73,000 voters were put on inactive status. We've removed 8,900 deceased names from the voter rolls. We've challenged and canceled the registrations of 675 felons. Seven people were prosecuted for voting twice in the 2004 General Election. If someone does vote twice, we will forward their case to the Prosecuting Attorney. "Bottom line is that it is a felony to vote twice and we have safeguards like signature verification in place to keep people from voting twice. If someone has evidence that a voter has voted twice, we would like to have that information to forward to the Prosecuting Attorney. We are serious about cleaning the voter rolls and protecting the integrity of the elections process and ask the political parties and members of the King County Council to join us in this effort. The continuous partisan assaults on the elections process and on the women and men working in the elections office are inappropriate and irresponsible. It's time for elections integrity to stand above partisan rhetoric and political agendas." |
Updated: Oct. 12, 2005
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