By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – Clallam County Auditor Shoona Riggs says if someone comes knocking at your door asking about you and your family’s voter registration status, they’re not from her office.
Riggs has received inquiries recently related to members of an organized group who have visited the homes of some voters in our county. She says her election staff never goes door-to-door, but instead contact voters by mail, phone, or email when necessary.
The group in question is the Washington Voter Research Project, which is headed by conservative activist Glen Morgan. Morgan has for years been a watchdog over county Democratic Committees statewide. In 2018, he prevailed in a lawsuit claiming Clallam County Democrats violated campaign finance laws and was awarded over $12,000.
This latest effort is aimed at making sure our state’s voter rolls are accurate and up-to-date to ensure against voter fraud.
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“A lot of those people who are registered to vote may not actually be legal to vote, and neither the auditor’s office nor the Secretary of State’s office really has the employees, the time, or the inclination or focus to go out and actually clean up these rolls in the way that they need to do it. We’ve got a fairly substantial list that we’re working on, initially of about just shy of 60 thousand, and not all of those are fake voters, but a good chunk of them are. And we just need to help process it so that we can narrow it down to the people that need to be cleaned off the rolls.”
But in a statement issued Saturday, Auditor Shoona Riggs says her office updated over 5,000 voter records in 2021 for nearly 57,000 registered voters.
Elections Manager Susan Johnson says making sure the voter rolls are up-to-date is a top priority throughout the year.
“We daily are updating records, and our team, led by our Voter Registrar, does an excellent job with that. We work with a variety of agencies. So it’s not a yearly thing necessarily, it’s a daily thing.”
Listed as examples of the latest updates are:
- 677 voter registrations canceled by voter request
- 859 voter registrations canceled because the voter died
- 1,072 voter registrations moved to inactive status due to undeliverable returned mail
As for any potential voter fraud in the past election, Johnson says the 2021 General Canvassing Board referred 12 cases to be further reviewed by the Sheriff and the County Prosecutor. So far, none of those referrals have been found to have been a case of voter fraud.
“We have a great team. We really care about elections. We really work hard. We have a team that really cares. We really want things to be perfect. We want to balance to zero, we want to account for each and every voter. We want to make sure that each and every vote is counted properly and that we’re getting back those ballots that were issued from that voter.”