Job 1 for new governor: Review election

By SUE DONALDSON  22 December 2004
GUEST COLUMNIST  Seattle Post Intelligencer

Regardless of who becomes our governor, one of her or his first acts should be to appoint a blue-ribbon commission to review this election and make recommendations to the Legislature for practical, immediate reforms. No one wants future elections to rely so heavily on the involvement of the courts and lawyers. We need to act now and make the necessary changes.

My concerns about our current election process began at 7 a.m. on Election Day. As an attorney member of the Legal Voting Rights Team, I arrived at a polling place in Columbia City that covered many precincts. After meeting all the poll workers, I asked the inspector who was in charge whether she thought there were enough provisional ballots for the day. She said she anticipated needing 100 provisional ballots and had requested that many and yet had only received 50. She called the King County elections office and requested more. She made repeated calls throughout the day and by late afternoon, the supply of provisional ballots was exhausted and we were given permission to make additional ones on a copy machine.

The polling place also ran out of pens to mark the ballots, necessitating a run to the store. No provisions had been made for blind voters or for those who needed translation services. Provisional ballots take additional explanation and special handling by poll workers and yet, no accommodation had been made for this. Provisional ballots under the current system physically can be placed in the scanning machines by mistake and will be counted there without being appropriately tracked. We folded provisional ballots many times before giving them to voters so that if fed by mistake into the scanner, the scanner jammed and the ballot was retrieved and correctly rerouted.

Complaints from voters included lack of appropriate signage, lack of physically accessible space, inappropriate requests by poll workers for identification, lack of assistance available for those unable to see, to read English or to read adequately. The list goes on and on. Were it not for helpful volunteers from groups such as MoveOn, the pens would not have been purchased and ballots would not have been read to the visually impaired or the linguistically challenged. And this was in a polling place where the poll workers were well intentioned and no one was trying to steal the election.

So what needs to be done? The new governor should appoint a task force to review the laws and practices governing our election process and make recommendations to ensure that the practices reflect the spirit as well as the letter of the law.

Some areas for consideration should include:

Voter education. How many of us knew that if our signature on the back of our absentee ballot didn't "match" the signature that we filed when we first registered to vote that our vote might not be counted? How many of us carefully replicate that signature before ping our ballot in the mail? How many voters know that under state law, a voter at the polls has the right to vote without having to present identification unless he or she is a first-time voter (and, even then, identification might not be required)?

Voter assistance. State law provides that if you have a sensory or physical disability and you need assistance in voting, you have the right to receive voting assistance. And yet, how meaningful is this if Braille ballots are not provided and there is no one available to read the ballot to you? Or, if there is no one to provide assistance in a language that you understand? There are probably many people in our communities willing to volunteer to provide such assistance on Election Day if asked and properly trained.

Provisional ballots. We should consider making provisional ballots of a different color or shape so that they cannot be "lost" in the scanner by mistake. We need to think through how provisional ballot handling can, perhaps, be diverted to a separate area within the polling site. This would allow ballots to be treated consistently and the lines of regular voters will not be delayed by the sometimes-extensive attention needed by a visually, physically or linguistically impaired provisional voter.

Greater uniformity among counties as to standards and processes. Starting, perhaps, with how votes are handled and counted.

This list is just a beginning. By conducting thoughtful public hearings statewide, the commission would quickly add to it. The time to do this is now. It will be better to have the next election in this state decided at the polling place than at the courthouse.