King County Voter Registration Irregularities

Today's Seattle Times notes that their reporters have checked some of the places where voters in King County claimed to live, and found that most of those places weren't residences.

Of course, there are apparently innocent reasons for many of the bogus residence addresses. People living on boats at marinas listed their rented mailboxes as their residences, for example.

In the absence of any effort at all by Logan's gang to screen out addresses which cannot possibly be valid residence addresses, it isn't surprising that many people wouldn't think twice about putting down their mailing addresses rather than the address of the marina.

Worthy of note is this bit at the end of the article:

Meanwhile, state Sen. Jean Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, said in a statement Monday that she will propose legislation prohibiting challenges of voters' registrations so close to an election.

No one other than polling place inspectors and judges can challenge voters at the polls on election day, and no one knows who is on the list of registered voters until the rolls are closed 30 days before the election--and the county publishes the list.

So, just how long before election day would Senator Kohl-Welles prefer to allow challenges to be made against people who aren't lawfully registered to vote?

Shall we give people one day after the voter rolls are published by the county in which to examine those rolls and submit challenges? Two days?