December 22nd, 2004
Election Reform Needed!
Washington State's close Governor's race has pointed out the continued need for voter and election reform. The difference between Democrat Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi narrowed to only a 10 vote difference in favor of Gregoire yesterday.

Contact: Steve Zemke
206-366-0811
stevezemke@msn.com

Seattle, WA—Among the many questions persisting:

1. Why is punch card voting still being used by about half of Washington state's 39 counties? The inherent error rate is acknowledged to be twice that found with optical scan machines.

2. Why do Snohomish and Yakima counties have electronic voting machines that do not produce a voter verifiable paper trail?

3. Why is there not a uniform standard voting procedure that is the same for all counties? Having 3 different methods of voting - punch cards, optical scans, and electronic voting introduces different error rates in counties across the state. Agreeing upon one voting method that is the same in each of the counties seems more reasonable.

4. Why can't citizens register to vote through election day? While mail in registration stopped a month before the election, King County still registered people until 2 weeks before the election if they showed up at King County elections or happened to encounter a mobile voting van that went to select areas in the county up to two weeks before the election. Voting registration should be universally allowed, not dependent on whether a mobile van happened to be in an area you happened to be in.

5. Why isn't there a statewide standard for validating signatures on absentee ballots and provisional ballots?

6. Why isn't there a state standard for notifying voters that their mail in absentee or provisional ballot has been rejected and not counted?


Solutions and proposals that needed to be considered now!

1. Eliminating all punch card voting by the 2006 elections at the latest.

2. Put into state law Secretary of State Sam Reed's directive that all e-machines must produce a voter verifiable paper trail by the 2006 elections.

3 Establish statewide regulations and procedures for uniform processing of ballots, rather than leaving specifics up to individual counties. Some counties verified every signature on absentee ballots, while others were reported to have accepted all their absentee ballots without checking the signatures. Some counties used 3 point verification, others required 6 points of similarity to verify. At the same time people voting in person at their polling place merely signed in and had no signature verification. Once they have voted there is no way to remove their ballot if someone later found out that their signature did not match with one on file.

4. Require that all rejected absentee ballot and rejected provisional ballot voters be notified by mail and by posting on the web. Postings should be done daily on both a county and the Secretary of State's website. Where phone numbers and e-mails exist county workers should contact voters. Opportunity should be given for voters to correct errors and verify signatures by affidavit.

5. Leave no doubt that every vote counts. Mandate that any recount of votes is not just a retabulation of votes but is also a recheck of any rejected absentee and provisional ballots. Clearly allow procedural errors and mistakes by election workers to be corrected before any final certification of election results. If any election is so close that a recount is done it only makes sense to doublecheck all steps that may have resulted in votes not being counted.

Other elections reforms to be considered:

1. Move to all mail balloting like in Oregon. This would reduce election costs. But unlike Oregon, count all ballots postmarked through election day. A campaign continues through election day and voters should not be forced to make their decisions prior to the end of the campaign, based on how quickly they think their mailed in ballot will reach the elections department. They should not lose their votes based on the efficiency or inefficiency of the U.S.Post Office. Many neighborhood mailboxes do not get picked up on Saturday or Sunday so to be safe one has to mail a ballot probably a week before the actual election day. Also one would probably want to establish at least one voting place per legislative district to deposit ballots through election day as well as county election offices.

2. Move the primary voting day for state and local offices to June to eliminate contested primary ballot results delaying unnecessarily the ability of the winner to run in the general election.

3. Make Election Day a state holiday and national elections a national holiday so people do not have to comptete with work schedules. This would elevate the importance we place on voting rather that making it a chore to try to fit in people's busy days.
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