SEATTLE – A federal judge on Tuesday barred Washington state from enforcing a new law that keeps people from registering to vote if their names do not perfectly match identifying information in other government databases.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez agreed with lawyers who claimed that under the law, misspelled names or other minor errors could improperly prevent people from voting.
The law, designed to help prevent voter fraud, took effect Jan. 1. It directed Secretary of State Sam Reed to compare driver’s licenses, state identification cards or Social Security numbers on registration forms with records from state and federal agencies to ensure that a voter’s information matches.
Potential voters could not be registered without a proper match. People whose applications were questioned had to respond to the state’s efforts to verify their identity within 45 days, or they were not included on the rolls. As of June 22, 178 people’s registrations had been rejected or canceled because of the law, and thousands more were trying to clear up their identities with the state.
The Washington Association of Churches, minority voter groups, a labor union and antipoverty activists sought an injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law, and the judge agreed. He noted that the requirements for registering to vote are that a person be a citizen, 18 years old and a 30-day resident of the precinct in which he or she wishes to vote. The person also must not have lost the right to vote or been declared legally incompetent.
The state “has failed to demonstrate how an error or omission that prevents Washington state from matching an applicant’s information is material in determining whether that person is qualified to vote,” Martinez wrote.
“This ruling knocks down an unnecessary barrier to voter registration,” said Justin Levitt of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, which represented some of the plaintiffs.
“Voters who are eligible shouldn’t have their registrations hung up by a typo, a married name or any number of other reasons,” he said.
Gov. Chris Gregoire won the 2004 election by just 133 votes over Republican Dino Rossi. Given that margin, Martinez said, “the public interest weighs strongly in favor of letting every eligible resident of Washington register and cast a vote.”
Reed had not had time to review the nine-page order and was not prepared to comment, his spokeswoman, Trova Heffernan, said Tuesday afternoon.
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