Legislature close to permanently authorizing prepaid postage for ballot return envelopes

Leg­is­la­tion to per­ma­nent­ly require that bal­lot return envelopes include pre­paid postage is on the the verge of becom­ing the law of the land in Wash­ing­ton State after the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives took action tonight on Sen­a­tor Joe Nguyen’s Sub­sti­tute Sen­ate Bill 5063, one of NPI’s leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties for 2019.

By a vote of eighty-three to ten, the House sent Nguyen’s bill back to the Sen­ate with amend­ments for final approval. Most of the cham­ber’s Repub­li­cans joined the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus in sup­port­ing the legislation.

The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
SB 5063
Bal­lots, pre­paid postage
Final Pas­sage as Amend­ed by the House
4/12/2019

Yeas: 83; Nays: 10; Excused: 5

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Barkis, Bergquist, Blake, Boehnke, Caldier, Callan, Cham­bers, Chap­man, Cody, Cor­ry, Davis, DeBolt, Doglio, Dolan, Enten­man, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Frame, Gildon, Goehn­er, Good­man, Gra­ham, Gregerson, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hoff, Hud­gins, Irwin, Jink­ins, Kil­duff, Kir­by, Klip­pert, Klo­ba, Kretz, Leav­itt, Lekanoff, Lovick, MacEwen, Macri, May­cum­ber, Mead, Mor­gan, Orcutt, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Pel­lic­ciot­ti, Peter­son, Pet­ti­grew, Pol­let, Ramos, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Robin­son, Rude, Ryu, San­tos, Schmick, Sells, Senn, Slat­ter, Smith, Springer, Stan­ford, Steele, Stokes­bary, Stonier, Sul­li­van, Suther­land, Tar­leton, Thai, Tharinger, Valdez, Van Wer­ven, Vick, Volz, Walen, Walsh, Wylie, Ybar­ra, Young, Chopp

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Chan­dler, Dent, Dufault, Dye, Eslick, Jenkin, Kraft, McCaslin, Shea, Wilcox

Excused: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Apple­ton, Hansen, Mor­ris, Mos­bruck­er, Shewmake

Among the Repub­li­cans vot­ing nay was J.T. Wilcox, the leader of the House Repub­li­can cau­cus. Most of Wilcox’s cau­cus, how­ev­er, opt­ed to sup­port the bill. Pre­paid postage for bal­lot return envelopes is fund­ed in both the House and Sen­ate ver­sions of the 2019–2021 oper­at­ing bud­get; SSB 5063 sim­ply changes the law to make pre­paid postage on bal­lot return envelopes mandatory.

We should have elim­i­nat­ed this bar­ri­er to vot­ing years ago. Now it’s final­ly hap­pen­ing and that’s a relief. This is a nice fol­low-on to last year’s ground­break­ing Access to Democ­ra­cy pack­age. Hope­ful­ly, not need­ing a stamp to return a bal­lot will fos­ter par­tic­i­pa­tion in this year’s local elections.

In 2015 and 2017, Wash­ing­ton set records for the worst gen­er­al elec­tion vot­er turnout in state his­to­ry. We don’t want to do that again in 2019.