How Democrats ought to defend their voters--a real life example

[eridani]

After the 2005 elections, a Republican in King County filed a mass challenge of hundreds of voters, based on drive-bys of businesses and public storage facilities (a favorite for voting addresses among homeless people who often store their stuff there).

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002626368_challenges16m.html

Suzie Sheary, the Chair of the King county Dems, immediately went into action, mobilizing all of the legislative district chairs within the county, who asked for volunteers to track down the challenged voters. We found most of them to be legal voters, though one of them was unfortunately publicly outed as homeless by the challenge. This prompt action caused very bad publicity for the Repubs—the whole thing backfired very badly on them.

In the very next legislative session, Democratic State Senators Kohl-Welles, Keiser, Jacobsen, and Kline introduced a bill to regulate mass challenges of this nature, which passed and was signed by the governor.

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=6362
http://www.horsesass.org/index.php?m=20060113

And THIS is how real Democrats stand up for their voters. Would that we had a similar level of commitment on this issue from the national party.

More on this story--

http://washblog.typepad.com/main/2005/11/king_county_gop.html
http://washblog.typepad.com/main/2005/11/sims_to_maleng_.html
http://horsesass.org/index.php?s=Lori+Sotelo&submit=search'
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/247249_voters05.html
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=25120

And now you know why Common Cause ranks WA state as among the lowest risk states for election fraud.