King County Elections will hold the first of its voter registration challenge hearings today at 4:30 PM, for the 48 voters who cast challenged ballots at the polls on election day. Um… actually it’s only 36 voters, as Lori Sotelo withdrew another 12 challenges once she saw the list.
Hearings are also scheduled for Monday and Tuesday of next week, for the 168 challenged voters whose absentee ballots have been processed thus far. Additional challenges may be scheduled for absentee and provisional ballots that have not yet been processed… but it doesn’t look like there could be too many outstanding.
So… out of the original 1944 challenges filed with much fanfare by Republicans on Oct. 26:
- 76 were duplicates;
- 126 voters had changed their address prior to Sotelo’s Oct. 26 challenge;
- 116 voters changed their address by the Nov. 5 deadline;
- 152 have been withdrawn by Sotelo;
That leaves only 1,474 challenges left standing, and of these, only 204 ballots have been processed. That’s, um… about 0.04% of total ballots counted thus far.
And that number is bound to shrink, for as the Seattle Times reported yesterday (“Voter-challenge errors mount“), the challenge list includes many more errors of the type the GOP has already withdrawn.
Vance said Sotelo and other King County GOP officials now are reviewing each challenge “with a fine-tooth comb,” and expect to withdraw more. There won’t be many, he added