SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Can Seattle Marxists print your Election Day ballot?

Nov 2, 2021, 9:47 PM | Updated: Nov 3, 2021, 5:36 am

vote, Seattle Marxists...

(AP)

(AP)

Is it possible that Seattle Marxists can print an election day ballot? Yup.

And it’s all legal.

That’s right. When listeners started sending The Dori Monson Show tips about activists in downtown Seattle waving hand-written signs that read, “Lost your ballot? We’ll print one for you,” it seemed impossible.

But our team has confirmed that activists from the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America – the party of Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and council candidate Nikkita Oliver — are indeed behind this.

Gone are the days of arriving in-person, at your local precinct, to sign your name and verify your one-and-only ballot before casting your vote. It was new, but mail-in voting came under fire in the days after Washington state’s 2004 gubernatorial election. When that outcome shifted from initial winner Republican Dino Rossi to Democrat Christine Gregoire – and then involved recounts and more recounts — election trust in this region bottomed out.

So what’s to stop today’s activists from further damaging confidence by visiting every vagrant encampment in the city for ballot harvesting? Dori wants to know.

To nail down whether Tuesday’s Marxist movement to help people who “happened to lose their ballot” – and whether this is a violation of local or state election laws — Dori spoke with Washington’s Secretary of State, Kim Wyman. Here’s what she had to say:

In a nutshell, Wyman says, the state has created safeguards and tightened up any cracks in the system that would allow voters to cast more than one ballot while also preventing counterfeit ballots.

“The optics” of printing last-minute election day ballots, “if nothing else, are very bad,” Wyman said. “But then, I have full confidence in the security measures on the back end.”

Even after 2004’s scrambled state gubernatorial debacle, Dori remains skeptical.

“I think there is way too much margin for error. … We have to get some faith back and a lot of Americans don’t have faith in the election system as it currently stands,” he said.

“Oh, I thoroughly agree with you, Dori, and that actually worries me a great deal,” Wyman replied. “We’ve worked hard in this state to restore the confidence that people lost in 2004.”

Dori’s interview ended on good terms with Wyman, but his suspicions remain: “I wish there was a way to track Tuesday ballots collected by this local Marxist organization.”

On this, we will all need to stay tuned.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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Dori: Can Seattle Marxists print your Election Day ballot?