Accusations of voter suppression waged ahead of Washington Democratic caucuses

A total of 101 delegates are at stake in Washington’s Democratic caucuses on Saturday. And as Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton prepare to go head-to-head, some in Washington are raising concern over voter suppression.

Social media posts from Bernie Sanders supporters are going viral, accusing the Clinton campaign of deliberately misleading voters, saying they received campaign mailers reminding them to vote tomorrow, but giving them the wrong caucus times and locations.

Nick Pernisco, Vice Chair of the 48th Legislative District chapter of the Washington State Democrats says these kinds of reminders go out nearly every election year, from almost every campaign.

After headlines about voters waiting for hours to vote in Arizona caucuses, and college students being turned away from voting, Pernisco looked into the issue and didn’t find anything deliberately untoward. He says the incorrect information is probably related to outdated mailing addresses.

“When someone moves they may get the letter at their new address, but it may have a voting location for their old address if they are still registered to vote at the old address,” said Pernisco. “This is because the Democratic Party may have the new address from a form being filled out online, let’s say on berniesanders.com, but the county has different voter information for that same person. The letter will go to the new address, but would contain the caucus location at their old precinct. I’m not saying that this is what happened, but this is a possibility.”

So, voters who have mailing addresses that are different from where they are registered to vote, or have recently updated their address, may see conflicting information.

That’s what a spokeswoman from the Clinton campaign said happened with Denise Gibbs, who made the original post questioning the ethics of the Clinton campaign. The spokeswoman said Gibbs opened a letter intended for someone else, sent to the mailing address they had on file for him. The campaign denied any wrongdoing.

However, anyone can check online directly with the Washington State Democratic Party to confirm their proper caucus location.

One woman sent an angry post that her 78-year-old mother had received a letter telling her she could vote for Hillary by mail and didn’t have to attend the caucus at all.

“It was written as HRC is the only candidate. She is die hard Bernie and was totally confused by this,” wrote Ann Kormos. “I bet this is going on all over voter confusion sending out to our seniors.”

According to Clinton campaign staff, those mailings went out several weeks ago. And a spokeswoman says they were blank, allowing voters to fill in the candidate of their choice.

Surrogate forms are not unique to one candidate, rather they are an option the Democratic Party gives voters in Washington to allow individuals to have their vote counted, even if religious observation, military service, illness, or disability prevents them from getting to their caucus location.