Governor Jay Inslee rebuffs SOS Kim Wyman, won’t cancel April 2020 special election

Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee has reject­ed a request by Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman to can­cel the upcom­ing April 2020 spe­cial elec­tion, which means the elec­tion will be held as planned, at least in those juris­dic­tions that wish to move for­ward with the con­sid­er­a­tion of a local levy or bond measure.

“Rather than post­pon­ing the spe­cial April elec­tions, we are work­ing with Sec­re­tary Wyman on what could be done to help audi­tors man­age elec­tions dur­ing the out­break, for April and lat­er in the year,” Inslee’s chief of staff David Post­man (a for­mer polit­i­cal reporter) told The Seat­tle Times’ Joseph O’Sul­li­van.

Wyman had actu­al­ly called for the elec­tion to be can­celed alto­geth­er, not post­poned, but even a post­pone­ment has been ruled out.

Wyman called the deci­sion “frus­trat­ing” and told O’Sul­li­van she was “dis­ap­point­ed”.

But offi­cials with sev­er­al fire and school dis­tricts are relieved. They have bud­gets they need to put togeth­er by June 30th, and hav­ing their levy and bond propo­si­tions called off by exec­u­tive decree would have been frus­trat­ing and dis­ap­point­ing.

It would also have set a bad prece­dent. As NPI’s Gael Tar­leton (who is chal­leng­ing Wyman) has argued, democ­ra­cies don’t can­cel elections.

Even dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, we need to be able to hold elections.

For a democ­ra­cy, free and fair elec­tions are a bedrock, essen­tial pub­lic service.

We are for­tu­nate that we use a vote at home sys­tem here in Wash­ing­ton, with no polling places, only acces­si­ble vot­ing cen­ters and same-day vot­er reg­is­tra­tion sites. Peo­ple do not need to queue up in long lines to vote. The bal­lot comes to them and they have sev­er­al weeks to fill it out and return it.

Some­one has to count the returned bal­lots, of course, and the peo­ple who do have to be in some degree of prox­im­i­ty to each oth­er to car­ry out their work.

That’s what Kim Wyman pro­fess­es to be con­cerned about.

We all want elec­tion work­ers to be safe, but we don’t achieve that by pulling the plug on the means by which we make deci­sions about how to gov­ern ourselves.

Rather than can­cel­ing the April spe­cial elec­tion, coun­ty audi­tors should use it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to estab­lish and test pro­to­cols for the safe han­dling of ballots.

We’re going to be hav­ing more elec­tions lat­er this year, and can­cel­ing those would deny Wash­ing­to­ni­ans the pow­er to decide who rep­re­sents them.

As a vet­er­an elec­tions admin­is­tra­tor, Kim Wyman ought to appre­ci­ate bet­ter than any­one that can­cel­ing the August and Novem­ber elec­tions would be just as dis­rup­tive to our state and coun­try as this pan­dem­ic has been.

Since can­cel­ing those elec­tions would be unthink­able, why bring the ham­mer down on the school and fire dis­tricts that made a law­ful deci­sion to go to the bal­lot next month? Wyman’s pro­pos­al was a bad idea and we’re glad Inslee said no to it.