Article by Erik Smith. Published on Monday, July 19, 2010 EST.

‘Worst Case in Modern Times’ – Investigation Turned Over to Washington State Patrol



By Erik Smith

Staff writer/ Washington State Wire

OLYMPIA, July 19.—The canvasser who is being investigated for signature fraud on behalf of Initiative 1098 is a prominent official of the Service Employees International Union, according to documents obtained by Washington State Wire through a public records act request.

            Although an SEIU official confirmed last week that the canvasser is a union member, an email obtained by Washington State Wire provides confirmation that the suspect is a member of the union’s leadership. The union is the leading financial backer of the measure, which would impose a high-earner income tax on those making more than $200,000 a year.

            State elections officials announced Friday that they had completed their investigation of the suspicious signatures, and that most of the 349 that had been red-flagged were in fact forgeries.

The matter has been turned over to the Washington State Patrol for further investigation and possible prosecution.

            It didn’t prevent state officials from deciding in the initiative’s favor last Thursday, however. After a random check of signatures submitted for the measure, they decided that the campaign had turned in more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. The measure turned in 385,000 signatures, and only 241,000 were required.

SEIU contributed about 43 percent of the $792,000 that it cost to get the campaign this far. 

            Name is Withheld

Although the name of the suspect has been widely circulated in political circles over the last few days, it has not been released officially by the secretary of state’s office.

State officials are redacting the name from the records because it appears on a document that is barred from release by a court order.

That restriction has to do with an unrelated case regarding the secrecy of initiative petitions. Backers of last year’s anti-gay-rights referendum are suing to prevent the release of the names of people who signed petitions. Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of disclosure last month, the case continues to make its way through the courts, and a temporary restraining order barring the release of petitions remains in place.

The name is not mentioned in this story because it cannot be confirmed with an official record. However, the records do confirm that the signature gatherer is female. They also indicate that the signature gatherer is registered to vote at an address in the SeaTac area.

            ‘A Fairly Prominent Official’

The canvasser’s identity has been an important point for those who are in the business of conducting initiative signature drives. Many accusations over the years have been directed at those who utilize paid signature gatherers for initiative campaigns, though only two cases of fraud have been uncovered in the last decade. Professional campaign organizers maintain that fraud is more likely to be committed by overzealous volunteers. In this case, the name of the signature gatherer was released to the I-1098 campaign, and the campaign has confirmed that she was a volunteer.
             Meanwhile, a key point of the story that has been making the rounds is confirmed by the public records – that the signature gatherer is a highly placed union official. An internal email last Tuesday from elections director Nick Handy to Secretary of State Sam Reed says, “Googling [name withheld] shows a fairly prominent union official with SEIU, the Service Employees International Union. We do not have complete confirmation that this is the same [name withheld] but there is a strong connection between this union and this income tax initiative.

“[Name withheld] signed the back of each of the 20 petitions in question as the person who gathered the signatures on the other side.”

Forgeries ‘Extremely Obvious’

Elections officials said the forgeries were easy to spot. In the same memo, Handy said, “Some of the pages are in the same pen and with the same handwriting. These pages are extremely obvious.”

Most appeared to be the names of actual registered voters, he said, but the addresses were made-up, and few of the signatures matched the signatures that the secretary of state’s office had on file.

In another email, Handy said the petitions “do not even remotely look like the typical petition sheet.”

            Checkers Looked for Others

            The records also provide some detail about the investigation process. State law requires signature gatherers to sign the back side of the petitions they circulate. After signature checkers discovered the problem, elections officials looked at all of the petitions that had been circulated by the SEIU official.

            The records also indicate that signature checkers took another look to see if there were other petitions with similar obvious defects. However, they do not indicate whether the checkers went beyond the 3 percent of petitions that had been pulled for the random check.

By late Wednesday afternoon, Handy was advising the secretary of state’s office that the story was likely to break sometime very quickly, because “our checks are done in a very open and transparent environment and observers saw the discovery at the time and we have 40 workers who were then tasked with looking for other potential sheets.”

The secretary of state’s office disclosed the problem publicly just before the close of business Wednesday.

           ‘Worst Case in Modern Times’

Now the matter is in the hands of the Washington State Patrol, which will assemble evidence and conduct a further investigation. Initiative signature fraud is a class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine as much as $10,000.

The decision as to whether to prosecute is up the state attorney general’s office.

Reed issued a statement Friday that called the fraud case the worst that the office can remember seeing.

“This is the worst case of attempted signature fraud we have seen in modern times,” he said. “It may be only a tiny percentage of the total signatures, but it does represent an attack on the process, which relies greatly on the integrity of the people who circulate the petitions. For that reason, we are bringing the full force of the law to bear.”

Meanwhile, the disclosure that the canvasser was a union official brings new meaning to the statement issued by union spokesman Adam Glickman last Thursday afternoon. Glickman said:

Your support matters.

Public service journalism is important today as ever. If you get something from our coverage, please consider making a donation to support our work. Thanks for reading our stuff.