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36th DISTRICT DEMOCRATS PRESS RELEASE
Jason and Shanna Sawatzki Led the Effort
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact:
Jason Sawatzki
36th LD Democrats
(206) 632-3939
jlsawatzki@yahoo.com
www.36th.org
Republican Challenge Errors Continue to Be Found;
State Sen. Calls for Change in Challenge Laws
Seattle, WA 11/6/05- The Democratic party launched a rapid response campaign to the Republican challenged voters on Saturday in one of the key districts effected by the challenges. Jason and Shanna Sawatzki, who serve on the board of the 36th District Democrats, headed up a thorough canvass of the challenged voters in the overwhelmingly Democratic district, finding an additional 29 errors in the Republican challenge. The 36th legislative district is home to the Watertowne Apartments where residents were wrongly challenged by Republicans and have since had their challenges withdrawn.
“We were not about to let this blatant voter suppression get by us,” said Jason Sawatzki, the 36th district representative to the King County Democratic Party “We mounted a massive canvass to determine the legitimacy of the remaining 405 challenged voters in our district”
Sawatzki said the timing of the challenges is suspect. The challenges were filed only 13 days before the election and most voters did not receive notice of the challenges before this weekend.
Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles agrees. She is beginning to work on legislation to create a blackout period on challenges to the voter rolls immediately preceding elections.
“Voters must be allowed time to fix errors in their voter registration before being disenfranchised” said Kohl-Welles (D) “the voter challenge law will lose its legitimacy if it is being high-jacked for voter intimidation and political gain”
Kohl-Welles said the legislation she is working on would set a deadline for challenges before absentee ballots are mailed out. Challenges could also be lodged immediately following the election. This would allow for legitimate challenges to be lodged while also allowing voters who have made errors time to fix their registrations, says Kohl-Welles.
The finding of the Democratic canvass concluded that an additional 29 voters were registered at legitimate addresses. Democratic canvassers made contact with 11 of these voters in person at these addresses.
“Most of these people were irate,” said Sawatzki “They were mad when they received notice of the challenge and even more livid that they were not dropped from the list along with the Watertowne residents. Some had not even received notices as of Saturday”
Cheryl Wilson, one of the challenged voters contacted by the volunteers said, “Not only have I been a registered voter in King County for 10+ years now, I've been legally registered at my current address (a 4 unit condo building) as a voter for the last 11 months.”
“Tuesday is my birthday, so I’m amused and annoyed,” continued Wilson, “but the biggest concern I have with this is that there will be some people who receive the letter of challenge, who will (erroneously) think they have done something wrong, and won't vote. In a state where last year 129 votes made a difference in a race, and in our political climate in general these days, this can make a huge difference. I'm all for voting integrity and elections reform, but not for partisan voter intimidation.”
The canvass also determined the reason for many of the post mail boxes that appeared on the list. In talking with the proprietors of the mail box businesses the canvassers learned that the majority of the names were people who lived on boats. According to state election law, these voters need to put their residency as the address of their marina and list a second mailing address when they register to vote. Many of these voters are in the process of correcting the error in their registration through the King County election hotline.
“These are not bad faith voters,” said Sawatzki “They simply made an error in filling out their registration, since their living situation is in an area of the election law that is not widely understood. They are correcting the error now, but these are eligible voters, many of whom were not allowed to remedy their voting status before they cast absentee ballots.”
End
Additional Contacts:
Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles
(206) 285-1869
Jkohl-welles@qwest.net
Shanna Sawatzki
(206) 854-3341
Shanna7@gmail.com
Cheryl Wilson
(206) 283-0719
Crowded[_]metro@hotmail.com
Posted on: 11/6/2005 6:06:26 PM
by suzie2004@comcast.net
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News leading-up to the 2004 Elections can be found in our old Blog
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