Voter registration change would be costly step backward

SAM REED
Last updated: April 10th, 2007 01:32 AM (PDT)

Under Senate Bill 5561, eliminating voter registration cut-off dates before an election, election workers would no longer know exactly who or how many people were registered to vote before ballots are counted.

People would be marking their ballots while filling in their voter registration forms. This defeats the purpose of a voter registration system, could compromise the integrity of our elections and is likely to degrade the public’s confidence.

Following the 2004 governor’s race, a judge ruled that 1,678 illegal votes were cast. After the exposure of such problems, the public and Washington’s election workers expect a voter registration system that will accurately reflect who is registered to vote and who is eligible to cast a ballot.

This legislation would clearly be a step in the wrong direction.

Under current law, citizens have until 30 days before an election to register by mail and 15 days before an election to register in person. County auditors continue to process voter registrations for a week or two after the 15-day deadline.

If the deadlines are removed, registration applications that would have been submitted a month or more before the election would be submitted in the days leading up to the election or on Election Day itself.

Voter registrations skyrocket in a presidential year; from October 2003 to October 2004 approximately 1.4 million voter registration transactions were processed in Washington. The high volume of last-minute registrations would no longer be spread out over a month but compressed into a week or two.

Compressing such a high volume of transactions into just a few days will cost taxpayers some $4 million to rebuild Washington’s current voter registration system. This would also cost the counties more than $4 million to implement and would add serious complications to certifying elections.

The days and weeks after Election Day should be spent tracking and counting ballots, not processing voter registrations for people who have already voted.

Some argue that eliminating voter registration deadlines would increase voter participation. In my opinion, this is simply not true.

The state county auditors association has looked into ways of increasing voter participation and concluded that eliminating voter registration deadlines does not accomplish that. The association decided that vote-by-mail would substantially raise voter participation, and over the years it has done so. At the time of the association’s finding, states with Election Day registration were experiencing higher voter turnout than Washington. Today, our state’s voter turnout is higher than the others.

Election Day registration operates primarily on the honor system, meaning that election workers cannot ensure a person has not already voted elsewhere. This is simply not acceptable.

In Minnesota and Idaho, the number of people who newly register or update their registrations on Election Day is 10 percent to 20 percent of the total registered voters. A conservative estimate of 10 percent for 2008 could result in 90,000 registration changes in King County alone and 320,000 statewide.

Oregon used to have Election Day registration. After almost 10 years of it, the people of Oregon had enough. County clerks proposed a constitutional amendment to implement a 20-day registration deadline. Voters overwhelmingly approved it.

For Washington, the benefits of eliminating our voter registration deadlines simply do not outweigh the risks.

Washington’s elections community has been working tirelessly to rebuild the public’s confidence in our election system, not to tear it down.

While considering this unhelpful legislation, lawmakers apparently do not intend to fund requested improvements in ballot-tracking technology.

Legislation passed in 2005 and 2006 improved the accuracy and security of our election system. Now in 2007, this legislation would take us a step backward.

Sam Reed is Washington’s secretary of state. His responsibilities include overseeing the state’s election system.

Originally published: April 10th, 2007 01:32 AM (PDT)