State official waving red flag on bill to kill voting by mail

The Associated Press

OLYMPIA — Washington state’s love affair with vote-by-mail is threatened by proposed federal legislation, the state’s top elections official said Thursday.

Secretary of State Sam Reed urged county auditors, the state’s congressional delegation and voters to help him fight a proposal now moving through the U.S. Senate that would outlaw absentee voting, vote-by-mail elections and use of punch-card voting.

The measure, Senate Bill 565, was drafted by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., in response to the widely criticized presidential voting in Florida last November.

Dodd, chairman of the committee handling election reform legislation, already has moved the bill out of committee, but spokesmen for Washington’s two senators, Democrats Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, said the measure isn’t likely to come up for a vote by the full Senate this year.

"The chances of this happening are slim to none," said Larry West, Cantwell’s spokesman.

Cantwell and Murray supported Dodd’s bill when it was initially offered. Neither, however, will accept a version that outlaws voting by mail, said Todd Webster, Murray’s communications director

"Sen. Murray won’t do anything to restrict people’s right to vote by absentee ballot. Her concern is that every vote count," he said.

"I see the cure as much worse than the disease," Reed said in an interview. "While trying to solve the problems that came up in Florida, this legislation gets into micromanaging elections around the country. It would cause severe problems in the state of Washington."

Reed’s concerns:

The bill apparently would mean an end to absentee voting and vote-by-mail elections. Dodd’s plan would require a voting system that allows voters to correct their ballots before they are tabulated at the precinct level — meaning in-person voting at a polling place with a sophisticated optical scan system that warns voters when they haven’t voted in all races.

Currently, only Chelan, King, Klickitat, Pierce, San Juan and Spokane counties have this precinct-based system.

Punch-card voting and optical scan systems that tally votes centrally at the county elections office would be banned as of 2004.

Again, this would require most of Washington’s 39 counties to change their systems. Fifteen counties, including Clark, Thurston and Yakima, have punch-card voting.

The switch could cost $13 million or more in Washington, and there is no guarantee the federal government would fully cover the cost, Reed said.

The measure puts the federal government, including the Department of Justice, in the business of deciding election standards instead of leaving that to state and local governments.

"While there is always room to improve any system, one size does not fit all," Reed wrote in a letter sent to the congressional delegation on Thursday.

The government should be careful not to undo "the progressive work we’ve accomplished in Washington state regarding mail voting. It is a process that the citizens enjoy and desire," he wrote.

Washington has allowed permanent absentee voting since 1993, and more than 54 percent of the voters voted by mail last November. Requiring people to go to polling places would put a big crimp in the turnout, Reed said.

"Voting by mail is not a new concept to Washington, but a tried-and-true system that has served us well," he told the delegation.

Voters show "a high level of trust and even preference for this option," he said. "It is clear that mail-in voting has become part of the very fabric of our election system in this state."

Reed conceded that use of punch-card voting is probably on the way out, but said counties should have more than just a few years to make the expensive switch.

"We can’t put the entire country under the knife because of mistakes made in certain places," he said.

On the Net:

www.secst.wa.gov