Primary vote in August wins House approval
Mandatory mail ballots for all counties also passes

BRAD SHANNON    THE OLYMPIAN   16 March 2005

Just four days after the Senate rejected it, lawmakers in the state House agreed almost unanimously Tuesday to move Washington's primary to August in a bid to help out military voters.
 
In a closer vote, the House also approved a vote-by-mail measure that requires all 39 counties to convert to mail-in voting by 2008. But it appears a proposal to let felons vote as soon as they finish jail and probation is dead this session.

The primary date proposal, dubbed by Secretary of State Sam Reed as the most important election measure this year, had run into repeated opposition at several recent turns including a defeat on the floor of the Senate on Friday night amid partisan squabbling.

"I was very happy to see it pass out of the House. It is the most important piece of legislation we can pass this legislative session," Thurston County Auditor Kim Wyman said Tuesday evening.

Reed requested the primary bill because county auditors say they need more time between the primary and general election to get out ballots to military and other overseas voters. He said that it needs to pass in the Senate "for the sake of our men and women in uniform" and for the quality of the voting system.

Under the bill, the primary would move from the third Tuesday of September to the third Tuesday of August. Voter registration week would be moved back three weeks to the first full week of June.

The sheer size of victory 95 yes votes and only Rep. Dan Roach, R-Bonney Lake, opposed gave hope to election officials and even some senators that the Legislature might actually get House Bill 2027 passed.

"We have to go over to the Senate and do our work," said Democratic Rep. Kathy Haigh of Shelton, her caucus' top voice on election issues. "I think we can change some minds."

"We still have a lot of work to do" on election procedures, said Rep. Toby Nixon of Kirkland, the top House Republican on election matters.

Still in doubt is the fate of several proposed changes in election procedures from standardizing the counting of provisional ballots and handling damaged ballots to whether photo identification should be required of poll voters.

The Senate already approved several procedural reforms including paper trails for electronic voting machines; requirements for photo-identification for poll-site voters, which Reed and Gov. Christine Gregoire's election task force recommended; and random checks of the voter registration rolls. Except for the paper trail, these have not been embraced in the House.

And Republicans, opposed by Democrats and Reed, a Republican, still are looking for a way to require all voters to re-register to vote. Alternatively, Nixon said he hopes to find a compromise that requires election officials to go through voter rolls and weed out ineligible voters.

In other action Tuesday, the House approved a vote-by-mail bill that requires all 39 Washington counties to convert all poll sites to all-mail balloting by 2008. It passed another measure letting the secretary of state's office carry out periodic reviews or audits of county election procedures, which had been the practice until the Republican- controlled Legislature in 1997 cut funding and made the reviews optional.

On the mail-in voting bill, known as HB 1749, Washington would move closer to an all-mail voting system like Oregon's. The vote was 58 to 38 with five Republicans crossing over to join majority Democrats in favor it, while two Democrats voted against it. South Sound lawmakers split along party lines.

About a half-dozen counties have made the switch or are in the process of making it.

Reed had favored letting vote-by-mail remain a county option, but his spokeswoman Trova Hefferman said he's neutral on the mandatory switch-over and that he "can live with it" if lawmakers eventually pass it.

In the Senate, Democratic Sen. Jim Kastama of Puyallup said he was "very impressed" by the House vote on the primary move, but skeptical of getting support for a mandatory mail-in voting system.

But Kastama said it helps his cause that the House, Reed, Gregoire, county auditors, and the election task force all have agreed to move the primary to August.