Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said Monday it’s possible residents who are not U.S. citizens are voting in today’s primary.
But he also said convicted felons account for the majority of illegal voters, at least according to a multimillion-dollar investigation into votes cast in the state’s 2004 gubernatorial race between Chris Gregoire and Dino Rossi.
Kimsey was asked about illegal voters in light of an Aug. 14 Associated Press article that ran on the front page of The Columbian.
The article said Washington, Utah and New Mexico have seen a surge in illegal immigrants seeking driver’s licenses because they are the only states that don’t require proof of citizenship or legal residency to obtain a license.
It follows, Kimsey said, that since it’s easier for noncitizens to get a driver’s license in Washington than in most other states, it’s also easier to register to vote as applicants need only a driver’s license or a state identification card.
They would have to lie on the voter registration form, which requires applicants to declare they are citizens of the United States.
Kimsey questioned how many noncitizens would run the risk of getting caught in order to vote. Lying on a registration form is a class C felony, and a felony conviction derails any chance of becoming a citizen.
“If you are a noncitizen do you really want to get your name on a list (of registered voters)?” Kimsey said.
David Ammons, spokesman for Secretary of State Sam Reed, echoed Kimsey.
“The last thing they are going to do is vote and get hooked up with a government agency,” Ammons said. “If you are undocumented, you just aren’t going to raise your head. If you become naturalized, then voting is one of the things you are happy to do.”
Suspected fraudulent voters can be challenged.
Kimsey, a Republican running unopposed for a fourth term, said in his 12 years as auditor he has dealt with only one challenge, and that involved a dispute over which district a voter lived in.
If a challenge does get filed, the burden of proof is on the person filing the challenge.
Katie Blinn, the state’s assistant director of elections, said Monday that in 2005 a man filed hundreds of challenges statewide against voters with Hispanic surnames. The challenges were thrown out by county auditors because the man did not try to prove the voters were not U.S. citizens.
After Gregoire narrowly won the governor’s race in 2004, the state Republican Party submitted names of residents who allegedly voted illegally as part of a legal challenge. In 2005, a Chelan County Superior Court judge ruled that 1,678 illegal votes were cast in the election, out of 2.9 million.
Of those illegal voters, 1,401 were convicted felons, Blinn said Monday. Other illegal voters were people who voted twice, people who submitted a dead person’s ballot or voted with a provisional ballot at a polling place and the ballot was counted before it was verified.
Blinn said Republicans found two university students who said they were not U.S. citizens and had voted, but the judge would not count those two votes because he said the students’ voting status should have been challenged prior to the election deadline.
More than $7 million was spent to analyze the integrity of that election, Kimsey said.
Of the illegal voters, 33 were from Clark County and all of those were convicted felons. The Clark County Prosecutor’s Office decided not to prosecute. At the time, Chief Deputy Prosecutor Curt Wyrick said he felt it would be difficult to win convictions, as defendants could maintain they didn’t understand their voting rights had been lost.
After the 2004 election, several changes were made.
When defendants are sentenced they are given paperwork that explicitly says they have forfeited their voting rights.
Kimsey said his office deletes the names of felons from voter rolls and follows up with a letter. After felons finish the terms of a sentence, they can apply to have their voting rights restored.
In 2008, the state received a federally funded database that allows counties to share information about deceased voters, felons or people who move from county to county. Names of 1,700 felons were cleaned off voter rolls, Ammons said.
