Department of Licensing failed to turn over voter registrations, Secretary of State says

Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who recent­ly reg­is­tered to vote using the Depart­ment of Licens­ing’s web­site may not have actu­al­ly been added to the rolls, the Sec­re­tary of State’s office dis­closed today in a late after­noon media advisory.

The Depart­ment of Licens­ing, which issues dri­ver’s licens­es, vehi­cle licens­es, and boat licens­es, allows vot­ers to request that their vot­er reg­is­tra­tion be updat­ed when they update their dri­ver’s license. DOL also allows Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to reg­is­ter to vote when obtain­ing a license through its website.

But appar­ent­ly, DOL has­n’t been for­ward­ing these new and updat­ed vot­er reg­is­tra­tions to the Sec­re­tary of State’s office. Until last Fri­day, that is.

The Sec­re­tary of State’s office says a total of 21,000 vot­ers may poten­tial­ly be affect­ed in some way by the blunder.

Here’s a more detailed expla­na­tion from co-elec­tions direc­tor Katie Blinn:

When peo­ple update their address for their driver’s license with the state Depart­ment of Licens­ing, they can also request to update their address for vot­er reg­is­tra­tion pur­pos­es. This pro­gram is com­mon­ly known as Motor-Vot­er. DOL recent­ly added a ques­tion about vot­er reg­is­tra­tion to its address update page on its web­site. How­ev­er, the Sec­re­tary of State’s office has not been receiv­ing these vot­er reg­is­tra­tion updates from DOL, and there­fore has not been able to pass these updates on to the coun­ty elec­tions offices. The Sec­re­tary of State’s Office just received the infor­ma­tion Fri­day evening, just two busi­ness days before Elec­tion Day.

Obvi­ous­ly, bal­lots have already been mailed to vot­ers, so this is a prob­lem. The ques­tion is… how big of a problem?

Approx­i­mate­ly 14,800 address updates were sub­mit­ted to DOL that were not received by the Sec­re­tary of State’s Office. How­ev­er, we think that coun­ty elec­tions offices had already received some of these address changes due to vot­ers con­tact­ing the elec­tions office direct­ly, or receiv­ing address update infor­ma­tion from the Post Office.

We think? Would­n’t it be bet­ter to know for sure?

An addi­tion­al 5,900 peo­ple request­ed to update their vot­er reg­is­tra­tion infor­ma­tion on the DOL web­site, but were not pre­vi­ous­ly reg­is­tered. The infor­ma­tion pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed by the DOL address update sys­tem is not suf­fi­cient to com­plete a new vot­er reg­is­tra­tion so these peo­ple will be receiv­ing a notice from their coun­ty elec­tions office ask­ing them to com­plete the reg­is­tra­tion. They can respond to the notice or fill out a new vot­er reg­is­tra­tion form. If any­one wants to vote in this Gen­er­al Elec­tion, they can go to their coun­ty elec­tions office to vote a pro­vi­sion­al bal­lot and com­plete the registration.

Great. So that means near­ly six thou­sand peo­ple who thought they’d done what they need­ed to do to be added to the rolls did­n’t actu­al­ly get added, and now they’re going to have jump through more hoops in order to vote.

So that’s the bad news.

Here’s the good news: Any­one who has not received a bal­lot but believes they should have may still par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tion by vot­ing a pro­vi­sion­al bal­lot. An out­dat­ed reg­is­tra­tion is still a valid reg­is­tra­tion — Blinn says state law allows a vot­er to vote a bal­lot for an old address until the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion file is updated.

Vot­ers can check their reg­is­tra­tion sta­tus at the Sec­re­tary of State’s web­site. If the site says you are not reg­is­tered but you think you should be, Blinn says you should go to your coun­ty elec­tions office or vot­ing cen­ter. She adds:

If there is a ques­tion regard­ing your eli­gi­bil­i­ty to vote, you are always eli­gi­ble to vote a pro­vi­sion­al bal­lot. Your vot­er reg­is­tra­tion sta­tus will be researched after the elec­tion, and the races and bal­lot mea­sures on which you are eli­gi­ble to vote will be counted.

Do the same thing if you received a bal­lot for the wrong address.

To us, this blun­der is just a reminder that we need auto­mat­ic vot­er reg­is­tra­tion. Vot­ing should­n’t have to be a has­sle. Reg­is­ter­ing to vote should not be nec­es­sary. We need an opt-out sys­tem for vot­ing, not an opt-in system.

We should add chil­dren to our vot­er reg­is­tra­tion data­base at birth. (We issue Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers to new­borns — why not vot­er registrations?)

A young per­son­’s reg­is­tra­tion should be auto­mat­i­cal­ly acti­vat­ed on his or her eigh­teenth birth­day if the state can ver­i­fy that he or she still lives in Wash­ing­ton (which should­n’t be too hard, espe­cial­ly since many young peo­ple apply for learn­er’s per­mits or dri­ver’s licens­es pri­or to their eigh­teenth birthdays).

Addi­tion­al­ly, adults who apply for dri­ver’s licens­es, pass­ports, or oth­er states ser­vices should be reg­is­tered auto­mat­i­cal­ly if their cit­i­zen­ship can be verified.

And once a vot­er is on the rolls, her reg­is­tra­tion should fol­low her, at least if she relo­cates with­in the state. We’ve got the tech­nol­o­gy to be able to update reg­is­tra­tions when peo­ple move. We should put it to use.