King County Gets Tough on Illegal Voters.

And by "illegal voters", I mean people who don't actually cast an illegal vote but just wanted to point out how flawed the system is.

From today's Seattle Times:

Woman registers her dog to vote; prosecutors growl

Jane Balogh had a pretty good idea who was calling when the phone rang and the caller asked for Duncan M. MacDonald.
Duncan is the dog Balogh registered as a voter seven months before the November 2006 election.

After making her point — how easy it is for a voter to register illegally — Balogh will be arraigned in King County Superior Court on Tuesday on a misdemeanor charge of making a false statement to a public official.
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If she accepts the plea deal offered by prosecutors, they won't ask for jail time but will recommend she be sentenced to 10 hours of community service, pay a $250 fine and commit no other crimes for a year.


Acting Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg says his office "can't simply look the other way. They say you should let sleeping dogs lie, but you can't let voting dogs vote."

Memo to Dan, the dog did not vote and never intended to vote.... unlike say the thousands of illegal votes documented by Stefan Sharkansky @ Sound Politics that nobody seems interested in looking at.

So I called the Prosecuting Attorney's office to ask if they had finished prosecuting all of those people who DID illegally vote and could not reach a human so I sent an email and got this reply:

Out of Office AutoReply: Question
Prosecuting, Attorney [Prosecuting.Attorney@METROKC.GOV]
This mailbox is not monitored on a daily basis. If you require immediate assistance please contact:

Criminal: (206) 296-9000
Family Support: (206) 296-9020
Civil: (206) 296-9015
Fraud: (206) 296-9010

Otherwise, we will resturn your message as soon as we can. Thank you.

I will anxiously away the "resturn" message.

Update:
I got an email reply from the "Acting King County Prosecuting Attorney". Mostly background on the law, what she did was a felony, voter role integrity, etc. Here is the money quote:

Following the 2004 election we prosecuted 10 people for voting more than once in the general election.

10... WOW... that is 1 more than 9. That has got to be, what, close to half of 1 percent of those who appear to have actually voted illegally in the 2004 election.

King County Elections... keeping the voter rolls dog free.