Seattle Voter Suppression Update

Here's an update to my previous post about the Washington State Republican Party's challenge to the eligibility of some 1,900 voters, including my neighbor, S.

I guess S was on our local CBS affiliate's news on Friday and was replayed a couple of times (too bad they don't have video of that up on their site). I saw S out in her yard today and she told me that she was not one of the 140 rescinded challenges, so she'll have to send in an affidavit to prove her eligibility (rather than go to the hearing herself and miss a day of work).

The Stranger, our local alternative weekly, is all over this like stink on shit in the Slog (Stranger blog); here are a couple of choice bits:

If you're going to falsely declare, "under penalty of perjury," that a person is an illegal voter, it's probably wise to check beforehand and make sure that person isn't a lawyer.

Jeffrey Weber, an attorney with the downtown Seattle lawfirm Buck & Gordon, lives in a single-family house in West Seattle, nowhere near any storage units, with his wife, Lisa Christoffersen. Both are legally registered to vote, and when both received challenge letters from Sotelo, Weber quickly fired off an email to King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng, asking him to "prosecute Ms. Sotelo for perjury and to seek the maximum penalty allowed under law for this violation of our rights." Mr. Maleng's office, through a spokesman, said it is not involved in any legal action against Lori "Fibby" Sotelo, "at this point."

[...]

Horsesass.org has posted a handy PDF file listing the 140 voters who the Republicans have admitted were wrongly challenged in "Fibby"-gate. And here, also via horsesass, is a longer list that will perhaps be more important in the coming days: It's an Excel spreadsheet with all 1,945 voters the Republicans challenged in this election for allegedly having illegal addresses.

Keep in mind that yesterday's 140 admitted errors only represent the Republicans' first cut at getting their longer list right. Republican Chairman Chris Vance tells The Seattle Times today that there will likely be more admissions of errors coming soon.