Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman on board with reforms to lower barriers to voting

Late last week, Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman sig­naled that her office will be sup­port­ive of efforts to elim­i­nate or low­er bar­ri­ers to vot­ing this ses­sion in Wash­ing­ton State, which will hope­ful­ly result in some bipar­ti­san coop­er­a­tion on the elec­tion reform front. (Both cham­bers of the Leg­is­la­ture are now con­trolled by Democ­rats for the first time in five years, which means the prospect of elec­tion reform bills mov­ing to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk is sub­stan­tial­ly greater).

In an email on Fri­day, Wyman embraced sev­er­al ideas that we’ve been cham­pi­oning here at NPI to make it eas­i­er to vote and sim­pli­fy our elections.

Here’s her rundown:

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS AIMED AT INCREASING VOTER TURNOUT
As we dis­cussed in last mon­th’s newslet­ter, I am sub­mit­ting a num­ber of pro­pos­als to the Leg­is­la­ture for con­sid­er­a­tion. Vot­er turnout in the last elec­tion was at a record low, so I’m propos­ing these ideas to get more cit­i­zens engaged and participating.

Pres­i­den­tial Primary
Chief among my pro­pos­als is mov­ing the default date of the Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry ahead by near­ly three months, from May to March. Sen­ate Bill 5333 and House Bill 1469 would sched­ule the Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry for the sec­ond Tues­day in March every four years, like­ly result­ing in more vis­its from pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates and a greater selec­tion for vot­ers to choose from.

By the time Washington’s Pri­ma­ry Elec­tion rolled around in 2016, the two nom­i­na­tions had large­ly been decid­ed – and yet 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple still par­tic­i­pat­ed. Imag­ine how many would have turned out if it were held ear­li­er? Mov­ing the date up would make Wash­ing­ton a rel­e­vant bat­tle­ground state again, and our vot­ers would actu­al­ly hear from can­di­dates them­selves instead of just their cam­paigns solic­it­ing donations.

Did you know that unaf­fil­i­at­ed bal­lots were last used in 2000? Since then, hun­dreds of thou­sands of inde­pen­dent vot­ers have been required to declare a par­ty affil­i­a­tion if they want­ed to par­tic­i­pate in a Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry. Many of them have sim­ply cho­sen not to vote since then. These bills would restore the unaf­fil­i­at­ed bal­lot in a Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry con­test and count those votes sep­a­rate­ly from par­ty votes. Par­tic­i­pa­tion would increase and cit­i­zens would be assured that their voic­es are indeed being heard.

My pro­pos­als would also autho­rize this office to move the Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry date if it would include Wash­ing­ton in a region­al, mul­ti-state pri­ma­ry – essen­tial­ly cre­at­ing a “super Tues­day” for the north­west­ern or west­ern Unit­ed States.

[Top Two Election]
Anoth­er way to increase vot­er turnout is to move the annu­al [Top Two] Elec­tion from August to June.

August is already busy with vaca­tions, sum­mer recre­ation and get­ting ready for back-to-school, so this bill would move the date to the first Tues­day fol­low­ing the first Mon­day in June.

That date, by the way, was cho­sen specif­i­cal­ly to avoid it falling on the Tues­day imme­di­ate­ly after Memo­r­i­al Day weekend!

Future Vot­er Pro­gram and Auto­mat­ic Registration
Anoth­er one of my pro­pos­als would cre­ate a “Future Vot­er” pro­gram, in which 16 and 17-year-old Wash­ing­to­ni­ans could enroll and be ready to vote by their 18th birth­day. It would also mod­i­fy Tem­per­ance and Good Cit­i­zen­ship Day in Wash­ing­ton (Jan­u­ary 16th) to include a require­ment for high school senior his­to­ry and social stud­ies class­es to pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enroll in the Future Vot­er program.

Addi­tion­al­ly, peo­ple who apply for an enhanced driver’s license or enhanced iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card – both of which require proof of cit­i­zen­ship – would be auto­mat­i­cal­ly reg­is­tered to vote unless they chose to opt out at the counter.

Elec­tion Day [Same-Day] Registration
Ever remem­ber some­thing impor­tant after it was too late to do any­thing about it? Some peo­ple find them­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where they need to reg­is­ter to vote at the last minute, so my pro­pos­al would extend the time peri­od for in-per­son vot­er reg­is­tra­tion to 8 p.m. on Elec­tion Day (the cur­rent dead­line is 8 days pri­or to an elec­tion). It would also extend the time peri­od for elec­tron­ic and paper-based vot­er reg­is­tra­tions to no lat­er than eleven days before the day of a Pri­ma­ry, Spe­cial or Gen­er­al Elec­tion, and move the dead­line for trans­fers (from one address to anoth­er) from 29 days to 28 days to avoid inter­fer­ence by fed­er­al postal holidays.

At least two stud­ies of vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion in Wash­ing­ton have linked low turnout to incon­ve­nient­ly placed pri­ma­ry dates, not to men­tion all the nation­al data that shows get­ting young adults inter­est­ed in civics almost guar­an­tees that they’ll become life­long vot­ers. The objec­tive with these pro­pos­als is to get every­one in Wash­ing­ton who is eli­gi­ble reg­is­tered and vot­ing, and all of these ideas will make sig­nif­i­cant strides toward that goal.

With the excep­tion of bring­ing back unaf­fil­i­at­ed bal­lots in the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry (a coun­ter­pro­duc­tive move we strong­ly oppose), these are all ideas the Leg­is­la­ture should act on this year. Anoth­er idea that Wyman did­n’t include but which needs to be enact­ed as well is pre­paid postage on bal­lot return envelopes. Requir­ing a stamp to return a bal­lot when no drop box is near­by is tan­ta­mount to a poll tax.

King Coun­ty has exper­i­ment­ed with pre­paid postage on return envelopes and seen an increase in par­tic­i­pa­tion in their pilot projects. It’s time to make pre­paid postage avail­able statewide to every vot­er. State Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er intro­duced a bill last year to make this hap­pen, and that bill either needs to be revived or rein­tro­duced this year so we can work on remov­ing anoth­er bar­ri­er to voting.

Bills to estab­lish same-day and auto­mat­ic vot­er reg­is­tra­tion pre­vi­ous­ly went nowhere when Repub­li­cans con­trolled the Wash­ing­ton State Senate.

But it’s a new day in Olympia. With the Sen­ate now revert­ing to Demo­c­ra­t­ic man­age­ment (the Leg­is­la­ture recon­venes at noon today), the way is much clear­er for wor­thy ideas like these to advance to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk.

PREVIOUSLY: Oops, we did it again: Wash­ing­ton sets record for worst-ever gen­er­al elec­tion turnout (Novem­ber 2017)