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September 26, 2010 in City
Spin Control: Cooler head prevails in voter fraud probe
Mention “voter fraud” and the politically righteous thunder how it won’t be tolerated. How nothing is more important than protecting the ballot. How only the lowest of the low – usually connected with the opposing party – would stoop to such a thing.
So when elections officials fingered a Stevens County man this spring for voting twice in 2008, the system swung into action. A sheriff’s detective interviewed Alan Christensen about the fact that his signature appeared to be on documents for two ballots, one in Washington and one in Oregon.
Christensen didn’t remember voting twice. But unfortunately for the recent Marine Corps retiree who left the service in 2008 after his second tour in Iraq, he couldn’t definitively say he didn’t.
He was charged with “making a false declaration as a voter,” a class C felony.
Christensen’s story isn’t a story of Chicago-style ballot box stuffing, but an example of how efforts to make it easier to register and vote can contribute to confusion and possibly bad balloting.
Christensen and his family lived near Suncrest while he was attached to the Marine Reserve Center in northwest Spokane for several years. But like many active-duty military personnel who move around frequently, he kept his driver’s license and voter registration elsewhere. When he retired and decided to stay in Suncrest, he went to get a Washington driver’s license on Sept. 30, 2008. The helpful person behind the counter asked if he also wanted to register to vote.
He remembers saying yes, answering several questions and signing up to vote.
He assumed – logically but incorrectly – that doing so would immediately cancel his registration in Oregon. But Oregon sent ballots to out-of-state voters on Oct. 8, so it’s unlikely the paperwork could have been processed before he was sent that ballot.
Later that month, Stevens County sent Christensen a Washington ballot. He remembers voting once – he can’t remember on the Washington or Oregon ballot – but admits he could have marked and mailed both ballots. Christensen has some post-traumatic stress symptoms from his Iraq service, receives a partial disability for it, and explains “my memory is shot to pieces on certain things.”
Early this year, when Washington and Oregon were checking the books for people who voted twice, his name came up. Information was sent to the Stevens County auditor, who referred it to the Sheriff’s Office, who sent a detective to interview Christensen. He told the detective he couldn’t remember if he voted twice, and the Sheriff’s Office had the signatures on the ballot statement checked. They matched; he was charged.
When he received a summons, he “freaked out” that he was being charged with a felony, but when he attended his arraignment in July, he was assigned a public defender who put him at ease that this wasn’t something to get too worried about.
For people who deal regularly with the flotsam and jetsam of the criminal courts – homicides, rapes, assaults, robberies – it might not be. But early this month, Christensen was back in a worrying mode when his public defender suggested he take an Alford plea, not admitting guilt but acknowledging there’s enough evidence to convict him. He’d have a felony record and lose his veterans benefits. He started calling around for a second legal opinion, but private attorneys wanted at least $7,000 to take the case.
For a guy holding a temporary job with the Forest Service, it may as well have been $700,000.
It’s a shame that none of the legal eagles was willing to discuss for free the concept of criminal intent. State Elections Director Nick Handy said proving criminal intent is a key part of any voter fraud conviction because there are many instances where voters just make mistakes.
For example, someone who lives in the suburbs and works in Spokane might register in the city to vote against taxes that affect his business. Makes a certain kind of logic, but it’s illegal. Or a husband may mark a ballot the way he’s sure his recently deceased wife would have wanted, sign her name and mail it in. Touching, but against the law.
These are what most allegations of voter fraud involve. Recall that in 2005, when Republicans had the greatest incentive ever to find evidence of malicious ballot-stuffing in the Rossi v. Gregoire election challenge, they produced a paltry few.
Things looked bad for Christensen until his 17-year-old son Chris wrote a letter to the Outpost, the local weekly paper, on the unfairness of the situation. A former law enforcement officer who read it called Stevens County Prosecutor Tim Rasmussen.
Rasmussen, who hadn’t been deeply involved in decisions on the case, talked to Christensen, looked at the file and announced he was dropping the charges with prejudice, which means they can’t be refiled.
“I don’t think he had any intention to violate the law. I think it was a mistake,” Rasmussen said.
Like most parts of the criminal justice system, Rasmussen’s office has a full plate and “resources are strained.” But that’s no excuse for treating a veteran this way, he added.
“The dismissal was the result of our recognition of the stresses that affect servicemen and women as a result of their service to their country and the complications they encounter when changing residences and medical providers,” he said, adding he wished Stevens County had a “veterans court” like the one in Spokane.
Then he did a classy thing: He apologized. “I’m sorry we didn’t catch it sooner.”
Spin Control, a weekly column by political reporter Jim Camden, also appears online with daily items, reader comments and videos at www.spokesman.com/blogs/spincontrol.
Supermajority for taxes unconstitutional, judge rules 
remymartin on September 26 at 9:06 a.m.
Excuse me, but there were more than a paltry few fraudulent votes in the 2004 governors race. Not only that, when the judge finally declared gregoire the winner, he said she won by 130 votes and that is very small. King County is the most corrupt county in this state and everyone knows it and that is where the majority of fraudulent votes were cast. And you can bet it is not going to change.
jimc on September 27 at 1:03 p.m.
Remymartin: The facts of that case are this. About 2.9 million voters cast ballots. Rossi was ahead when all the votes were first counted. There were two recounts, the first by machine where he was still ahead, but by a smaller margin and the second by hand in which she was ahead by 129 votes. She was certified the winner under state law. The state Republican Party challenged her certification, claiming enough voter fraud to have swung the election, filed suit and the trial was held in Wenatchee in front of Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges.
The state GOP got a chance to bring up all cases of voter fraud they could prove; Democrats got a chance to counter. Between the two parties, there was a evidence that about 1600 people had registered illegally and thus voted illegally, had cast more than one ballot, were deceased so someone else must have cast their ballot, and provisional ballots that had been cast and counted without adequate identification checks. The vast majority (around 1400) of these votes involved felons who had registered and voted without their rights being restored. But from that point on, the problem of proving voter fraud that affected the outcome of that race, even though it was the closest statewide race in Washington history, got greater because the state GOP had no way of proving that people who were illegally registered had voted for Gregoire instead of Rossi because once a ballot is cast, received by the elections office, opened and put into the ballot counting machine in a way that protects the secrecy of each person’s vote, it is impossible to figure out how those people voted. They offered statistical analysis, and suggested that the votes should be subtracted from the candidates’ totals in a way that reflects the voting pattern of the precincts where the voter lived. So those from Democratic precincts would be assumed to be for Gregoire and those from Republican precincts for Rossi. Democrats countered that for the felons who had registered and voted without properly restoring all citizenship rights, that didn’t make sense because most of those voters were men, and a larger percentage of men voted for Rossi, and felons would be less likely to vote for Gregoire who was the attorney general. (The trial lasted about two weeks and this is a very shortened version of the arguments)
In the end, the Republicans produced no actual voters who said they had registered or voted illegally AND voted for Gregoire. Democrats produced five, four who said they voted for Rossi and one who voted for the Libertarian candidate.
Bridges said there were irregularities, but nothing that would allow him to overturn the election: “There is no evidence that the ballots were changed, the ballot box stuffed or that lawful votes were removed from either candidate’s ballot box.” And he adjusted the vote totals so that Gregoire won by 133 votes, not 129.
Mathematically, the 1600 voters the Republicans questioned represented .055 of 1% of the total. The 5 that were thrown out represented .00017 of 1% of the total. I think paltry works as an adjective in either case.
It is true that the biggest problems were in King County, and they involved poorly tracked or verified provisional ballots and ballots that were misplaced and not tallied in the first count. But there were problems in other counties as well. In Spokane County, which went heavily for Rossi, there were 8 misplaced ballots
After the case, the Legislature passed a series of laws to improve voter registration and ballot security. So I’d be willing to take the bet that it has changed and continues to get better.
Jim Camden/Spin Control
remymartin on September 28 at 7:23 a.m.
I appreciate your response. I am retired from King County about a year and a half ago and I had been around that county enough to know a little about the Chicago-style politics in it. I was grateful for my job, but I could not wait to move to Spokane and get a breath of fresh air. Thank you, again.
HammerSix on September 28 at 9:23 a.m.
Jim,
Sorry to just now see this and respond, but there is a minor correction to your story.
In reference to: “A former law enforcement officer who read it called Stevens County Prosecutor Tim Rasmussen.”
I am the guy who notified Tim Rasmussen in response to Chris Christensen’s letter to the Outpost. No slight to our fine men and women in Law Enforcement, but I am a retired 24-year ARMY Officer. I communicated with Mr. Rasmussen as a fellow Veteran of Alan Christensen and as a former MILITARY Officer “taking care of the troops.”
A small and understandable mistake, but loses a lot in the actual context.
Prosecutor Rasmussen was entirely unaware of the details of the case when I notified him. In the end, finally armed with some details, Tim Rasmussen did the right and honorable thing—both in the courts of law and of public opinion.
Pete Joplin
Major, US Army