Bogus Voter Registration Challenge!

[rock_action]

So I get this certified letter from King County today informing me that my voter registration has been challenged.

Attached is a form signed by some woman named Lori D. Sotelo saying that "under penalty of perjury" she has "personal knowledge and believe that this person ... does nto reside at the address given on his or her voter registration..."

Under the section where she is asked to provide factual basis for the challenge, she writes "Voter is registered to vote at an address that is not a physical residence."

WTF? I live in a vintage apartment building in Belltown with about 60 other people. Then I talked to my neighbors - EVERYONE I talked to also received the letter.

I don't know a Lori Sotelo, so I Googled her - it turns out she's the Senior Vice Chairman of the King County Republican Party.

The Republican Party challenged the registration of an ENTIRE apartment building. An apartment building that's been around since the 20's or 30's.

When I vote, my vote will be put into a "challenge" pile. Then I will have to show up in person at an administrative hearing, which I'm sure I'll have to take off work for, to prove that I live at an actual, physical address. So will all my neighbors. That's the only way our votes will be counted.

This is an outrage. If the Republicans had taken the trouble to do actual research it would have been obvious that this is an apartment building, not PO boxes or mailboxes or storage units or some other bogus mailing address.

I vote in almost every election, and it pisses me off that I have to defend that to people who can't do their homework. Screw em. I emailed Lori and invited her over to see for herself. I can't wait to see her at the hearing and broaden her "personal knowledge" of me.

[Gomezticator]

Jennifer Maerz also experienced this, per the Slog. It makes voting a total chore for certain people, as all the voting places they tell you to choose from are way in the suburbs and only open during business hours, and so far, two for two: it involves people who live in Seattle.

This is either a knee-jerk response to the allegations of bad ballots in last year's governor's election, a (right-wing?) attempt to disenfranchise certain (liberal?) portions of the population en masse (I mean, dude, they are still pissed about Rossi losing), or both.

Call the media (well, the mass media). Call the state elections department. And if they blow you off, contact the governor's office direct. This looks to me like a retaliatory attack on urban voter's rights from the right, from inside the elections office.

[rock_action]

Wow, I didn't even see that. This is insane. I called the PI and KOMO already. All the neighbors are pretty fired up. We're all showing up en masse to the hearing. We're feisty like that.

Next step is definitely contacting my representatives. I'm so mad right now...

[Gomezticator]

Good work! Let's both keep our eyes out for anyone else who gets hit with this bogus challenge, so you can pool your resources with everyone and make some noise.

[Gomezticator]

Excellent suggestion, rock, from another forum where I brought this matter up:

If she swore under penalty of perjury, take her & the Republican Party to court for interfering with the election process and falsifying information. If she affected that many people, make it class-action or something.

[thatsbutt]

Is it the Lori Soleto at 206.275.1520 and 425.990.0404 who works for the KC Republicans?

Sources:
http://kcgop.sitebuilder.completecam...owcat=3&seq=12
http://www.kcgop.org/kcgop_team.html

[Ramekin]

If you look here, it seems they've been declaring their intention to challenge "illegally registered" voters.

http://www.wsrp.org/News/Read.aspx?ID=165
http://www.kcgop.org/vrip.html
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...ctions13m.html

Maybe they didn't find enough illegal ones, so they just had to add in a few Belltown apartments to pad the numbers. I bet they go for the "honest mistake" defense.

[raymondrna]

maybe someone should challenge her voting regestration.

[raymondrna]

btw all this will make for a highly entertaining election.

hope you get these artards in court.

could you post some scans of the letters?

[rock_action]

Thanks for all the support and ideas, guys.

Someone in the building works at a law office, she was going to take her letter in to work today to see what her firm thinks about it. I know I'd be interested in getting all legal on her.

I'll be happy to scan my letter and post it when i get home from work.

It sounds like KOMO might swing by the building later.

And yeah, if you've been challenged or just want to give Lori and her KingCo GOP cohorts a piece of your mind for the fun of it, thatsbutt nicely provided her contact info. I already sent her a scathing email with a picture of my building so she could see for herself.

[Cyn]

I was just going to suggest that the TV news be called about this--it looks like someone has already done that. I suggest calling Robert Mak at 5--he lieks to leap on political issues, and will do the best that can be expected out of broadcast news, right?

[switzerblog]

I've been working on this all morning; you guys beat me to the punch. This is my first blog post on the issue, but there will undoubtedly be more to come. Goldy at Horse's Ass is also on it, and KING 5 has been working on it since yesterday, so it sounds like this will blow up tonight. Fibby Sotelo's gonna have some serious 'splainin to do!

[rock_action]

As promised, here is a scan of the letter:

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3

[raymondrna]

Thanks!!!!
...

[rock_action]

Thanks for writing the article, Eli! So far this is the first non-blog media coverage I've seen about this issue, and I'm glad you got to talk to someone from our building.

I'll be curious as to how fast I'll be getting my apology, and whether I have problems at the polls on Tuesday. I'll keep y'all posted.

[tempertantrum]

Informational only, of course!

Lori "This is Bush country" Sotelo , homemaker.

Sotelo, Lori and D?
9015 Se 59Th St
Mercer Island, WA 98040
Ldsotelo@earthlink.net or
ldsotelo@email.msn.com
(206) 275-0230

And this:
http://marcellasfamily.com/sellars_r....html?sid=7587

Scary what a quick Google search can bring up. I feel dirty.

[Chascarrillo]

Great. Now I'm paranoid that I might have received a letter but tossed it since I live in a building with a commercial unit in it, not to mention having a similar address to the Shurgard Storage across the street. Not my fault - I blame every single candidate for local office and every ballot initiative proponent/opponent. There were a phonebook's worth of info cards and flyers in my paltry mailbox today. Could've gotten lost.

In any case, the idea of throwing out storage company addresses may be somewhat bogus. There are people who honest to god really do reside in storage units. Maybe it's not legal for them to do so, and the companies don't condone it, but it's hardly uncommon. I know that these people are a world away from such well-to-do folks like Chris Vance and his trust fund interns, but they do exist, and it sounds like they'd directly be affected by this Friday Night Massacre.

On edit: Horsesass.org has posted an Excel spreadsheet with all of the contested ballots here: http://www.horsesass.org/index.php?p=1134

[Pro-Pain]

As far as I know some dems used to use dead people's names as voters. Nobody seems to bitch about that or I missed something. Before you start complaining about the opposition you'd better be spotlees and innocent yourself.
Now throw some more rocks and stones as those styrofoam balls do not hurt.

[Gomezticator]

No, Pro-Pain, you're wrong. Indiscretions during the '04 election doesn't make it okay to retaliate by disenfranchising 1900+ voters on a technicality that isn't even true but still has to be formally defended with King County.

Rodney King was a criminal. That didn't make it okay for 4 cops to needlessly beat the crap out of him for 20 minutes during an arrest.

[gsbarnes]

So I looked at the spreadsheet, courtesy of horsesass.org, just to see if there was anyone who lived near me. There were 3 people who live at a house at 7701 40th Ave NE, a house I coincidentally pass by nearly every day walking my kid to school. There are no businesses within five blocks in any direction of this address (although if the address had been 7700 or 7702, that would have raised a red flag, since that'd be in the middle of the schoolyard). But it wasn't, so what the hell could they have been thinking?

Interestingly, though, if you do a google search for 7701 40th ave NE seattle (no quotes), you get a storage company located at 7701 40th W in University Place, WA (down by Tacoma). What do you want to bet that was what triggered the red flag here? And, if I'm right, how freaking incompetent do you have to be to not match on the city or the directional indicator?

[why-knot]

This post removed from the Stranger for personal Problems with this Publication

[raymondrna]

Originally Posted by Pro-Pain

As far as I know some dems used to use dead people's names as voters. Nobody seems to bitch about that or I missed something. Before you start complaining about the opposition you'd better be spotlees and innocent yourself.
Now throw some more rocks and stones as those styrofoam balls do not hurt.

i vote independant (as do a lot of washingtonians). so i'm clean as a mother fuckin' whistle.

that said, this shit this east side bitch pulled is beyond a simple mistake--it's fuckin' dirty deeds .. done dirt cheap .. hence the fact that this blew up in their faces. these tards can't even be sly about shit. they're too busy trying to cause problems to do it in a way as not to get caught. that's fuckin' lazy. and Lazy is no method (party) I could support.

and in conclusion .. dems are a bunch of boneless cat dicks .. except that guy who pulled that shit in the senate earlier this week.

[Saprobe]

Originally Posted by rock_action

And yeah, if you've been challenged or just want to give Lori and her KingCo GOP cohorts a piece of your mind for the fun of it, thatsbutt nicely provided her contact info. I already sent her a scathing email with a picture of my building so she could see for herself.

Better yet, challenge HER voter registration! :D

.

[switzerblog]

Originally Posted by Pro-Pain

As far as I know some dems used to use dead people's names as voters. Nobody seems to bitch about that or I missed something. Before you start complaining about the opposition you'd better be spotlees and innocent yourself.

Do you have any proof of that, or are you just taking the word of the people who just incompetently challenged hundreds of validly registered voters? Because as I recall, all the illegal votes actually discovered last year were votes for Rossi - hence, the final margin went from 129 to 133 during the trial.

And by "nobody seems to bitch about that", did you mean every crybaby Republican bitches about it constantly, ad nauseum? Because otherwise you're either lying or monumentally stupid, because despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, Republicans continue to make these claims at every opportunity.

[ffaristocrat]

Go to the status column of the challenged voters spreadsheet.

Do a filter and select "I". That means "Inactive". They are not registered to vote anymore. There are 535 of them on the list, none of whom were sent ballots.

Why are King County Republicans challenging hundreds of inactive voters? Do they want to them set to "Ultra-Inactive" status? Should they be erased from history? Unremembered? What more do they want done with these folks? They're already gone! They can't vote!

I'm baffled no one has really brought up that point yet because it was the first thing that leapt out at me when I first got a copy of the list.

Actually, what it means is that Republicans started what passes for research back in June-July but didn't bother to check a current KC voterfile before running to the press because it means they can say "almost two thousand" instead of "about 1400".

If you recall their big list of 5200 "duplicates" a few weeks ago, a third of that list was inactive or deduped already too. Again, slipshod work was done to inflate the numbers for PR purposes.