Voter Database for WA State

Very cool project. The people over at Sound Politics have put King and Snohomish county voter database up for you to look at. They are planning to add additional counties records as they get the data. Some of the Sound Politics readers are finding some interesting stuff: bq. One reader discovered by using the database that a complete stranger is registered at his house. The stranger's name does not even match the name of the couple who previously owned the house and lived there from 1990 to 2002. And: bq. Reader Deborah has been finding a lot of the voters who live in private mailboxes and storage lockers. It would be hard for me to believe that it's not illegal to list such an address on a voter registration form. Unfortunately, my understanding is that these are the sort of improper registrations that have to be challenged before an election and that they don't count as "illegal votes" for the purposes of a contest. I wish I were wrong. On the other hand, if it can be shown that election officials engaged in misconduct related to illegal registrations that might be a different matter. bq. As it turns out, long time observers of the King County elections office tell me that after the 1998 KING-5 News expose, the elections office eliminated private mailbox voters and implemented strict controls to prevent new registrations at such addresses. They also tell me that these controls were lifted after Dean Logan took over the department and it was never made clear why.