Prosecute Perjury in King County

Attn: The Honorable Norm Maleng
King County Prosecuting Attorney
W554 King County Courthouse
516 Third Avenue
Seattle, WA 98104

On October 26, 2005, 13 days before our most recent election, Lori Sotelo submitted challenges to 1,944 registered voters in King County. Ms. Sotelo is the Senior Vice Chair of the King County Republican Party and heads their Voter Registration Integrity Project. Challenged voters began receiving notice of their challenged status via mail on Thursday, November 3, 2005, providing little time to correct errors.

Hundreds of the challenged voters were in fact legally registered at their physical address, and were challenged wrongly.
Possibly hundreds were registered, while not at their physical address, still in accordance with existing election law. These include the homeless, and others with non-traditional addresses.
535 were marked inactive, meaning they were voters who no longer voted, and were slated by King County Records and Elections for removal from the rolls.
Ms. Sotelo altered the official challenge form, creating a new category of challenge specifically for her purposes.
Ms. Sotelo did not perform any research herself, as acknowledged by Washington State Republican Party Chair Chris Vance in the Seattle Times.
Ms. Sotelo does not personally know any challenged voters, nor has she made any attempt to contact them prior to challenging their voter registration.
Ms. Sotelo acknowledged in recent challenge hearings that she made no attempt to verify accuracy of information during the VRIPs match.
Ms. Sotelo remains unable to provide evidence of any voters actual residence, as required by current election law in the event of a challenge.

Ms. Sotelo signed each of the 1,944 voter challenges under penalty of perjury. The documents require the signer to declare, by signing, that under penalty of perjury they have personal knowledge that the challenged voter does not, in fact, have the legal right to vote at their registered address.

Ms. Sotelo did not on October 26, nor does she now, have personal knowledge of the actual address nor voting eligibility of any of the 1,944 voters she has challenged. Because of her actions, many legally registered voters were too intimidated or frustrated to vote, cheating our democratic system.

These acts of fraud were initiated not to protect voters, but specifically to disenfranchise certain voters and provide negative public relations to a candidate for King County Executive. No one should be allowed to cause such disruption in the democratic process nor make overt attempts to impede the rights of any citizen to legally cast their ballot.

As a result, we, the undersigned, demand that the Honorable Norm Maleng, as required by the duties of his office, investigate the elections-related actions of Ms. Lori D. Sotelo of Mercer Island, WA, from the timeframe of July, 2005 to the present date, and prosecute her to the fullest extent of the law, for, at minimum but not limited to, acts of perjury in each of the 1,944 times she swore under penalty of perjury that she possessed knowledge regarding registered voters which she did not have.