Mailbox and Campsite Voters

The Washington voter registration data (VRDB) contains every registered voter at any point in time. It is ever changing, as teenagers reach voting age, when a voter moves, or when a voter passes away. So, a copy of the VRDB from June may look much different than a copy from December.

We obtained a copy of this data after the 2020 election, so it essentially should contain all of the voters who participated in the presidential election, and even those who did not.

We looked at the data extensively and found many things. What I would like to share with you now, is the illegally registered voters and the places we found people registered to.

Mailbox Rental Voters

Mailbox voters are those who are registered at a mailbox rental location. Similar to a P.O. Box, but the address doesn’t say “P.O. Box”. This is common when you have a mailbox rental outside of USPS. Could be a UPS, FedEx, or any mailbox rental or mail services shop.

It could also be a post office but using their physical address. It’s not going to say P.O. Box because that is too obvious. These all have street addresses, and without knowing or recognizing the address, they will never standout from the rest. You have to search the addresses.

With some help, of some generous volunteers, we have found roughly four thousand voters, who participated in the November election, from a mailbox rental.

In Washington state you may use a mailbox rental as your mailing address. But unless you also live there, cannot use it for your residential address. You are required to provide your physical location, even if it’s a park bench.

One more thing to throw out there… these mailbox rentals often offer mail forwarding services. Some will even advertise to open and scan your mail. Then you can manage it virtually. Thats where this search started. Virtual mailboxes.

Campsite voters

In Washington state, a vote can be counted even if it’s not a traditional ballot, or on ballot paper even. So, one could probably print the image of their scanned ballot, and mail it in.

It is not illegal to register at a campsite. If you lived there for at least 30 days, and you attest that it is your home address, it’s fine. But when you register there and do not live there, it is illegal.

There is a place in Snohomish County called Port Susan. It is a privately owned campground. People own the individual lots, which are in this private campground community.

There are several rules to abide by when you own a site in the gated property. One of them is a rule restricting the number of days anyone may spend at the property. Nobody may live there year-round. Visitors and residents are required to have a parking pass in the window which states the dates you will be there.

There is a booth at the entrance to check people in. There were 919 people registered to this campsite. 737 of them voted at some point in 2020.

Since they are owned by the individuals, we were able to compare the voter’s details to the county assessor’s website and see which voters actually owned the site they were registered to. Due to the rules of the property, there is no reason someone should be eligible to vote from there, unless they are the owner. Even still, most owners likely have a different address which would be the address they should really be voting from.

There were 101 of the 737 voters who matched the property records or could have been a spouse or family member. 305 of these voters did not match the property owner’s information or appear to be a relative. 220 addresses used by people as their registration address were listed on the assessor’s property records as being a vacant lot. 12 addresses did not appear to exist, the unit numbers were not located, and 76 of the voters did not list a site or unit number.

One odd thing, many of these voters used “Apt” for the unit type, instead of “site” or “lot” which would be more appropriate. Additionally, in the northwest part of the state, we found hundreds of people registered to other campgrounds. That was not an exhaustive list, we presume there are thousands of these.

There are tools available that could prevent these types of addresses from being used for voter registration, yet there is no address validation, or anything used to weed out the addresses which would not qualify as a residential address for voting purposes. Remember, if addresses like this were used as the mailing address, that would be fine. But everyone must provide their physical location for voting purposes.

In another neck of the woods…

In Thurston County, we found 260+ people registered to a handful of campgrounds. These were found in a very quick search, and we believe there are many more in the county, and surely throughout the state. These addresses also have turnout rates and many first-time voters.

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