Washblog

Panelist Biographies

Shirley Forslof is the elected Whatcom County Auditor, a position she has held for almost 19 years.   She is board member of the Secretary of State Certification and Training Board and has been a member of that Board for many years.

Shirley is a Certified Election Administrator under the State of Washington Certification and Training program  and has maintained that certification since the program's inception  by Washington State Legislation. She is certified as a county official from the University of Washington Graduate School of Public Affairs.  

Shirley is a member of the Washington State Association of Auditors' Elections, Recording and Licensing Committees.  She is chair of the Northwest District of the Washington State Association of County Auditors' and Co-Chair of the Recording Committee of the Washington State Association of County Auditors.

Shirley has been working in the Whatcom County Auditor's office for 36 years, serving in all divisions.  She was the Election Supervisor prior to being elected County Auditor.  Shirley is a member of many County Committees or boards.   Shirley is an active volunteer in her community.  Shirley is married, lives in Bellingham and has six grandchildren.

Paul Miller has been with the Secretary of State Office in Washington since May 2000, most recently in the position of Voting Systems Manager. In that role, he certifies the voting systems that may be purchased by county jurisdictions. His program also assists counties in the state with the use and deployment of voting systems and is responsible for promoting best practices in security and usability. He continues to play a key role in the in-house development of Washington's voter registration database.

Prior to working with the Secretary of State, Paul Miller worked for King County eleven years as Assistant Superintendent of Elections - Data Processing, a role where he acted as the systems administrator for Elections with management and policy responsibilities. He oversaw the transition from punch card voting to optical scan ballots in 1998. Procedures and processes for protecting the security of the voting systems, and the layout and tabulation of ballots were part of his responsibility.  He dealt with the variety of issues related to maintainence and use of the county voter registration database there as well.

Paul Miller began his career as an application programmer/systems developer for approximately eight years.  Paul graduated from Bellingham High School in 1971 and obtained his B.A. from Wheaton College, Ill in 1976.  He is married with three grown children in college.   Paul now lives in Seattle.  

Bob Edelman is the Senior Research Analyst for Evergreen Freedom Foundation's Voter Integrity Project. He also serves as an advisor to the Evergreen Freedom Action League. He holds a B.S. degree from Georgia Tech and an M.S. in Management Science from MIT, which he earned under a Sloan Fellowship. Bob was employed by Boeing for 33 years before his retirement as Chief Engineer of the Electronic Systems Division in 1992. Since retirement he has been active on political and initiative campaigns and, since 1997, has conducted research and analysis in support of EFF's Labor Policy Center. In addition, he has done extensive independent research to uncover illegal campaign finance activities by candidates and organizations. In early 2005 Bob directed the Voter Integrity Project as a volunteer until the present director, Jonathan Bechtle, came on-board. Since then he has assisted in election policy analysis and research into illegal election activities.

Michael Slater is Director, Election Administration Program, Project Vote. Michael has thirteen years of community, labor and faith-based organizing experience. He has previously served as Political Director for SEIU Local 503 in Oregon, Executive Director of the Nevada Interfaith Council for Worker Justice, Organizing Team Leader for SEIU District 1199 Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky, and Head Organizer for Minnesota ACORN. A sample of his contributions include passage in Minneapolis and St. Paul of two of the country's first living wage ordinances, founding of a public charter school in St. Paul for immigrant children, ethical labor standards for bidding on public construction projects in Las Vegas, and founding of a pro se legal clinic for immigrant workers in Las Vegas. Michael began his career in progressive politics as an intern for United States Senator Paul Wellstone. He is married to Lori Cain, a newspaper photographer, and they are proud parents of a baby boy named Benjamin.

John Lindback has served as Director of the Elections Division in the Oregon Secretary of State's Office since March, 2001.  He grew up in rural Minnesota and attended the University of Arizona, where he earned a degree in journalism. He turned 18 the year that 18 year-olds were first given the right to vote and made it a personal mission to vote in every election He lived and worked in Alaska for 23 years before assuming the election director post in Oregon. While in Alaska he served for six years as chief of staff to the lieutenant governor, a job that included oversight of Alaska's statewide election system.  John and his wife, Dianne, live in Stayton and have three sons, two working and voting in Seattle and one working and voting absentee from China.

John currently serves as treasurer of the National Association of State Election Directors. He also was elected to serve on the executive committee of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission's Standards Advisory Board.

Forum on Voter Registration Controversy

Whatcom Fair voting (WFV) is drawing attention to the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

On one hand is concern that only statutorily-qualified individuals are registered and may cast their votes. On the other is concern that no qualified voter is removed from the rolls. The question is how to design adequate registration controls without creating barriers to full participation by legitimate voters.

HAVA mandated that states create integrated voter registration rolls by January 1, 2006.  

In the process of creating integrated voter registration roles, the State of Washington identified, invalidated and removed tens of thousands of duplicate registrations, dead voters, convicted criminals, fraudulent registrants, and otherwise unqualified registrants.

The public, both individuals and organizations, played a vital role in asking fundamental questions about Washington State's voter data-base and voter registration process.   Are qualified voters being excluded from registering? Are unqualified persons being allowed to register?  Are voters voting more than once or casting ballots for someone else?  

The integrated voter registration database became available to the public on CDROM in February 2006.  It included voter name, address, date of birth, county, and voting district(s).  It did not contain social security numbers (the State has social security numbers, but does not publish them.)  Dates of birth were included because there are so many people with identical names, including some at the same address.  Birth date is sometimes the only distinguishing characteristic.

After analyzing the database, members of the public revealed the shocking state of our statewide voter database which per HAVA should have been updated by January 1, 2006.  One key analyst was the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF); another was Stefan Sharkansky of the Internet blog Sound Politics.  Tom Olsen, a member of Whatcom Fair Voting, analyzed the Whatcom County portion of the database.  

EFF, Sharkansky, and Olsen noted discrepancies and potential fraud which still have not yet been resolved by county auditors and prosecutors.  EFF turned over evidence of actions that broke laws to John McKay, U.S. Attorney for Western Washington, and to the FBI.  Neither has opened an investigation or pursued prosecution.  

The registration matching process used by the State of Washington caused other public concern.  A suit entitled "Washington Association of Churches et al, v. Reed" was filed in U.S. District Court, on behalf of a coalition of citizens and groups concerned about voting rights, to block implementation of a five-month-old state election law. The law (RCW 29A.08.107) would have barred  citizens from voting unless the Secretary of State first succeeded in matching their names, driver's license or Social Security numbers, and birth dates from their voter registration forms with records kept in other government databases. In July 2006, U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez granted an injunction against the law.

Whatcom Fair Voting is holding a free forum on Voter Registration issues on February 24, 10 a.m. at the Bellingham Public Library. All citizens interested in these vital issues are welcome to attend, and public participation will be encouraged.

Pam Floyd gave a presentation to King County's Citizen Election Oversight Committee December 7th, 2006. I couldn't attend. But I did get a copy of her slide presentation. If someone knows where I can upload (host) that file, I'll post it and provide a link.

I misunderstood the business last year about the Wash Assoc of Churches suing Sam Reed over the state-wide VRDB. Victor King explained pretty well, during a League of Women Voters event, how the proposed procedures were unconstitutional. Something about removing voters from the database without notification. King's a smart guy and it sounded so straightforward when he explained it. But my note taking skills are poor and I don't remember the arcana.

What I had been concerned about was the use of very naive "database matching rules" for comparing names in the VRDB against the DMV records. Names don't match, exactly, and the voter would be removed. That's a huge problem.

A huge amount of work has been done in this area, both in academia and the real world. I work in healthcare IT, where we absolutely must have the correct records, despite data entry errors, name changes, address changes, variations on names (e.g. Mike vs Michael), etc.

I've spoken to Paul Miller a number of times about this problem. It hasn't gotten much further than that. But I'm optimistic that our state's system will mature over time.

Speaking of which, one time I spoke with Pam Floyd, early on in my activism, she related their efforts to coordinate with other states. We're fortunate in Washington State that our system is our own and we have in-house expertise. Many other state's contracted with vendors (e.g. Diebold, ChoicePoint, etc.) and they've had their teeth kicked in.

I will note here that as of today, like a handful of counties, King County uses their own system. It's provided by Diebold. So I'm sure it's fantastic. Our system exchanges data with the state's VRDB.

Althought HAVA requires that each state has a statewide VRDB, Washington permits King County and a few others to continue with their own system. Taht's really smart. Switchover costs would be huge and it's better to transition. Also, King County is huge and the state's system is new. So again, it's better to take baby steps.