Today I am announcing the filing of criminal charges against seven defendants for submitting over 1,700 fraudulent voter registration forms to King County Elections Department in October of 2006.

While the actions of these individuals are extremely serious, I want to begin by assuring the public that no one has voted under these false registrations in any election.

Indeed, a joint federal and state investigation has determined that this scheme was not intended to permit illegal voting.

Instead, the defendants cheated their employer, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or ACORN), to get paid for work they did not actually perform. ACORN's lax oversight of their own voter registration drive permitted this to happen.

Voter fraud will not be tolerated in King County.

This is a crime that undermines public confidence in our democratic process, and we take it very seriously.

Both the group of individual defendants and the ACORN corporation will be held to account by our actions today.

The individuals will be criminal defendants -- facing felony charges.

ACORN will be the subject of a strict Settlement and Compliance agreement, designed to ensure that this type of negligent supervision does not occur again. ACORN has also agreed to pay King County $25,000 in compensation for the time and effort it took to clean up our voter rolls of these false registrations.

This was an act of vandalism against our voter rolls.

The massive volume of false voter registrations dumped into the King County voter database required a tremendous effort to investigate and clean-up.

In October of 2006, 30 days before the November election, a woman employed by ACORN delivered approximately 1,800 allegedly new voter registrations forms to King County.

King County Elections' staff had immediate concerns that some of these registrations looked fake due to the similarity of the handwriting.

However, because it was impossible to determine on short notice which of the 1,800 registrations were valid and which were not, and because of limitations imposed by federal statutes and case law, King County Elections determined that it could not unilaterally remove these registrations from the voter registration list.

The risk was too great that a validly registered voter would be prevented from voting.

Instead, Elections accepted the registrations, and chose to monitor the registrations submitted by ACORN for two complete election cycles. (Feb. school elections and March Viaduct advisory ballot). After those election cycles, Elections determined that only 6 people associated with the 1,800 registrations submitted by ACORN had actually voted.

It was at this point, in March of 2007, that King County Elections referred the matter to the Prosecuting Attorney's Office for further investigation.

The investigation determined that in the summer and early fall of 2006, ACORN set up a voter registration operation in Pierce County. ACORN hired individuals – “canvassers” – to gather voter registrations, first in Pierce County and then in King County. Canvassers were paid $8 per hour.

ACORN canvassers were required to place their initials at the top of the voter registration forms they gathered. Based on these initials and ACORN personnel records, the investigation quickly focused on six individuals who had submitted the vast bulk of the fraudulent registration forms in King County.

After some excellent investigative legwork by King County Detective Chris Johnson, assisted by King County Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Steve Hobbs, and an Assistant U.S. Attorney and FBI agent, the full extent of the scheme was revealed.

It was hardly a sophisticated plan: The defendants simply realized that making up names was easier than actually canvassing the streets looking for unregistered voters.

The group would travel to the public library with a stack of voter registration forms, grab a couple of phone books, take a name from one page, an address from another, and falsely sign the affidavit declaring their eligibility to vote.

In over 1,000 cases, the defendants used the address of local homeless shelters, assuming that these registrations would be more difficult to investigate.

That decision put a significant burden on the operators of these shelters, who have spent dozens of hours trying to determine whether any of the names used on the registrations were ever shelter residents.

It was apparently the defendants' hope that using “real” names and addresses would allow the fraudulent activity to go undetected.

Based on the facts uncovered during this investigation– I am charging these individuals with the felony crime of providing false information on a voter registration, a violation of RCW 9A.84.130(1), as follows:

Clifton Mitchell	2 Counts	64 registrations
Tina Johnson	7 Counts	353 registrations
Jayson Woods	7 Counts	353 registrations
Ryan Olson	2 Counts	93 registrations
Robert Greene	1 Count	45 registrations
Kendra Thill	1 Count	36 registrations
Briana Debwa	1 felony count: accomplice to filing all registrations and one misdemeanor count of Making a False Statement to a Public Official.

The investigation also confirmed additional fraudulent registrations submitted in Pierce County by Jayson Woods and Tina Johnson. After consulting with the Pierce County Prosecutor, I am charging these two individuals with an additional count each of providing false information on a voter registration based on their actions in Pierce County.

Under state law, providing false information on a voter registration is Class C felony. While the maximum possible sentence is five years, the standard range is from zero to 365 days in jail.

In the course of this investigation we also looked closely at the whether criminal charges against ACORN as a corporate entity were appropriate.

In the end, we have determined that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that the actions of ACORN’s employees were intended to benefit ACORN.

In fact, it appears that the employees of ACORN were not performing the work that they were being paid for, and to some extent, ACORN is a victim of employee theft.

This does not mean, however, that ACORN was entirely blameless in this matter.

We believe that ACORN’s internal quality control procedures were not just deficient but entirely non-existent when it came to the latter stages of their operation in Tacoma.

ACORN’s negligent oversight of the Tacoma voter registration operation subjects them to potential Civil liability and led to our negotiations with them to recover damages and ensure that such negligence would not be repeated in Washington State.

We have negotiated a Settlement and Compliance agreement with ACORN that has been signed by myself, Ron Sims and Sec. of State Sam Reed, as well as by ACORN's National President.

This unprecedented agreement accomplishes a number of important goals:

• ACORN must pay King County $25,000 to cover expenses incurred in responding to the submission of fraudulent voter registrations.
• ACORN agrees to establish and follow appropriate procedures regarding management, training, quality control, and the handling of “suspect” voter registrations.
• ACORN must pay escalating penalties if it fails to comply with the agreement or its own quality control procedures.
• The agreement remains in effect for the next 5 years. It gives the Prosecuting Attorney the power to review ACORN’s quality control operation on an ongoing basis.
• And, finally, clearly puts ACORN on notice that violations of the agreement, or failure to follow appropriate quality control procedures, could result in criminal liability.

This investigation has been a joint effort by the King County Prosecutor’s Office and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington.

The investigation was assisted by :

• The King County Sherriff;
• The Washington Secretary of State;
• The King County Department of Elections;
• The Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney; and
• The Pierce County Department of Elections.

I want to specifically thank:

• Acting United States Attorney Jeff Sullivan;
• Secretary of State Sam Reed; and
• Sheryl Huff, Director of King County Elections

For the assistance they and their staff have provided throughout this investigation.

Their presence here today is a measure of how seriously we all take the issue of voter fraud.

Conducting an investigation to confirm the submission of over 1,700 fraudulent voter registrations is not a simple task. It would have been easier to let this matter pass by and allow the registrations to become inactive over time. That was one option.

I am convinced, however, that the integrity of our voter registration system requires that we aggressively respond to any attempt to undermine it.

We stand together and speak loudly today: Voter fraud is a crime. We will not tolerate conduct that threatens the integrity of our voter rolls.

Any person, or organization, submitting false voter information will be held to account.

For additional information, also see: Felony Charges Filed in Voter Registration Case

Dated: July 26, 2007