Washblog

Washington State has new laws on the books, as of January, designed to improve our voter registration system.  We've also got a new voter file, released just this month, a compact disk containing the registration records on all the voters in all 39 counties of the state - approximately 3.8 million of us.  It's paid for by federal funds and required under the 2002 Help America Vote Act.

The combined voter file is a huge step forward.  It makes it possible for the state to void out duplicate registrations and to remove felons and deceased voters from the voter rolls in one file, without counties having to compare the information in separate databases.

But The Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) isn't satisfied, and isn't ready to let this new system -- or our new election laws -- prove themselves.  EFF's still unswayed in its determination to activate public outrage against what it characterizes -- against all evidence -- as a widespread pattern of ineptitude and corruption in our voting system.

Its new initiative, which would require re-registration of all voters, has not been filed yet and I learned from a call to the Secretary of State's office that it may be unavailable for public review - at at least from that site - for up to 25 days after it is filed, during the review by the Code Reviser and then by the filing organization.  But we can get the probable gist of what that initiative will say from reading EFF's Recommendations to the Legislature Regarding the 2004 Election, last updated 1/25/06.  In this document, the rationale given for requiring a re-registration of all voters in the state is as follows:

Require all currently registered voters to reregister by December 31, 2005. This is necessary in order to clean up the voter rolls and to comply with the January 1, 2006, requirement that the voter file contain the driver's license number or the last four digits of the Social Security Number.

This paragraph contains a misrepresentation of the relevant regulation, RCW 29A.08.010: Information required for voter registration, which states the following:  "As used in this chapter: `Information required for voter registration' means the minimum information provided on a voter registration application that is required by the county auditor in order to place a voter registration applicant on the voter registration rolls."

What this regulation requires is not, as the EFF document declares, "that the voter file contain the driver's license number or the last four digits of the Social Security Number." There is, indeed, no requirement in that regulation that the voter file must contain given information for all voters.  The requirement under 29A.08.010 instead, is that the county auditor has an obligation to require certain information at the time he or she places a voter on the rolls

Sound like quibbling? Well, it's a relevant distinction. It gets to heart of what I see as the central unacknowledged demand that EFF is making.

With its invented "January 1, 2006, requirement that the voter file contain the driver's license number...." EFF implies that Washington State's new law requires a de-novo overhauled voter file.  It doesn't.   EFF wants a requirement for a de-novo overhauled voter file which doesn't exist.  And so EFF declares that it exists.

It is clear that state law requires maintenance but not overhaul of our voter file, as evident from RCW 29A.08.605, Registration list maintenance.  The requirement under this section that there must be a thorough review every two years that must be "be nondiscriminatory in its application" is just one more expression of the intent of our state law, to facilitate and encourage voting - and be fair about it.  This intent would likely be violated under the EFF initiative, as voter challenges have historically been shown to disproportionately disenfranchise the poor - people, after all, who would find it more difficult to take time from work, etc. to meet new requirements.

So EFF is asking the people of Washington State to shoulder a huge taxpayer-funded expenditure and outlay of citizen and government official time.  More paper shuffling, more fingers keying in routines and data, all of us standing line and making calls, and disappointed voters at the precincts on voting day. And it's hiding its demand behind a false assertion -- that these burdens, expenses, and impositions are already required under the law.

EFF claims they're doing this because Washington's 2004 election was rigged.

Their claim is an exact reversal of the truth. The recounts of the 2004 election and the subsequent legal decision, media coverage, and blogger and partisan investigation provide compelling evidence that our elections are relatively clean here in WA.  EFF's campaign is part of the effort to turn that evidence around and make it prove the opposite.   District Judge John Bridges, chosen by the Republicans because he was known to be conservative and had previously overturned an election result, dismissed Republican fraud allegations with prejudice, the strongest dismissal possible.   Bridges noted only that there was irregularity in the election - "as there appears to be in every election."

Why does the Evergreen Freedom Foundation pour probably hundreds of thousands of dollars - the talents and time of its staff members and of dedicated citizen volunteers, into the project of convincing the voters of Washington State, despite all evidence to the contrary, that our government and our citizens cannot be trusted?   Why, in its rhetoric, does it cherry-pick the words from Judge Bridge's decision, quoting his criticism of a culture of inertia and selfishness among the workers of King County's election department, but never quoting his conclusion that, basically, the Republicans' charges of fraud and unusual ineptitude were full of hooey?

If this initiative is successful, we will see an undue burden placed upon poor and homeless voters.  We will likely see fewer Democratic votes in our elections.  My hope is that, if the voters of Washington State are convinced by the false arguments of EFF and its cohorts to approve it, the equal access clause in RCW 29A04.25, which is quoted at the beginning of this post, and the requirement for non-discriminatory list maintenance at RCW 29A.08.605, will be sufficient protection against its implementation.  It would be much more preferable, however, if the EFF's campaign to sow distrust among the voters of Washington State could be discredited and debunked. Maybe then we'd have some healing of the public trust here in the beautiful State of Washington.