They’ve come to Washington.
Volunteer canvassers want to know if you or someone in your household shouldn’t be registered to vote.
That’s between you and election officials, and none of their business. If they come to your home, there’s no point in being rude, but you should say “no thank you” and close the door.
The Seattle Times ran an expose about this operation in their Memorial Day print edition. You can read it online without hitting a paywall here.
Copycatting similar operations in other states, it’s run by Glen Morgan (profile here), an Olympia-based rightwing activist and Tea Party trainer (photo below, story here) who’s “known for filing frequent campaign finance complaints against Democratic politicians, unions and other allied groups” (Seattle Times story).
I mention that because it unmasks the blatantly partisan motives behind his “vote integrity” operation, and it’s also ironic because Republicans routinely oppose campaign finance legislation and freely violate those laws. You’ll also be shocked by who’s really being targeted by his efforts to deregister voters.
Morgan is deploying hundreds of volunteers “across the state in part due to distrust in the election system stoked by Donald Trump” (ibid.). This isn’t on the level. Look, any “vote integrity” scheme based on Trump’s election lies and the GOP’s false claims of voting fraud is a scam. So don’t talk to these people. Treat them like phone scammers: Don’t engage, just hang up.
The Seattle Times article says, “What’s happening here is loosely connected to a national campaign by Trump supporters hunting door to door for proof that the 2020 election was fraudulent.” It wasn’t, because the “fraud” that Trumpers believe cost their man the election is nothing but a fantasy in their twisted minds.
The article continues, “In Washington, the Morgan-led doorbelling campaign has generated complaints … leading several county auditors … to issue warnings that the group is not authorized by any election office. In interviews, some county auditors said they have received reports of canvassers trying to pose as government officials.”
For example, the Thurston County auditor said, “People call very concerned, because they were portraying themselves as county employees. They had the Thurston County logo on their clipboard.” The Spokane County auditor said she received reports of two canvassers representing they work for her office.
State Democrats called the doorbelling “invasive” and a “voter intimidation effort,” criticisms leveled against similar operations in other states. In Colorado, civil rights groups have sued claiming the operation that targets minority voters. (It’s no secret that Republicans don’t want black people to vote; see my post on that subject here.)
Here in Washington state, though, the potential victims are a different group. The Seattle Times says, “Two county auditors said the bulk of questionable voter names brought to their attention by Morgan so far appear to be valid military and overseas voters, who are allowed by federal law to vote at their last registered address or at the address of a family member.”
By way of illustration, “Morgan’s group gave Thurston County [Auditor] a list of 2,000 names …. The office analyzed the names, and found no fraudulent voters. ‘Most of what they were calling suspicious was military and overseas voters,’ she said.” Likewise in Clark County, ‘a majority of the names’ on lists supplied by Morgan’s group are military and overseas voters. Morgan’s list did identify one Clark County voter who died in the 1980s and the auditor’s office canceled that registration. ‘No ballots have been voted in that voter’s name since they were decided,’ he added.”
Continuing on, “In King County, an initial list supplied by Morgan’s group flagging hundreds of voter registration anomalies did not turn up any illegal voters …. The county looked at the list and found nearly half of the names were ‘inactive’ voters, meaning they do not received ballots, and will not in the future unless they update their information …. In other cases, voters appeared to be legally voting from addresses where they previously lived.”
This is why you don’t entrust voter roll maintenance to outside amateurs. Apart from lacking legal authority to manage voter rolls, they lack the tools and understanding to do so properly.
As the Seattle Times points out, “Washington state has nearly 4.8 million registered voters, a population that is constantly shifting as people die or move to new addresses without updating their registrations. Elections officials are constantly sifting through data in an effort to keep the voter rolls up to date, though Morgan argues their efforts are inadequate.”
Well, so are his, and much more so. Not to mention his efforts are very, very partisan and not a little sinister in their motives.
Related story: Michigan’s 2022 primaries are rife with signature fraud on GOP candidate petitions, see story here.
Photo above: Is this who you want booted from voter rolls? Photo below: Glen Morgan training Tea Partiers in activism
