Trump booster Doug Ericksen wants to abolish vote at home in Washington State

Wash­ing­ton State’s vote at home sys­tem is an inspi­ra­tion to many peo­ple across the Unit­ed States. It allows peo­ple to ful­fill their civic oblig­a­tions secure­ly and eas­i­ly, and it is a sys­tem that is hard to manip­u­late to sup­press the vote. So, nat­u­ral­ly, Don­ald Trump back­ers like Doug Erick­sen want to get rid of it.

State Sen­a­tor Doug Erick­sen is prepar­ing leg­is­la­tion to return Wash­ing­ton state to in-per­son vot­ing, require vot­er ID at the polls and inval­i­date most absen­tee bal­lots that arrive by mail after Elec­tion Day. Erick­sen, a Fer­n­dale Repub­li­can, claimed with­out pro­vid­ing evi­dence or cit­ing specifics that there are “long­stand­ing con­cerns” about elec­tion security.

Erick­sen is one of Don­ald Trump’s most ardent fans and admir­ers. He jumped on board the Trump band­wag­on ear­ly in the 2016 cycle, and was the co-chair of Trump’s Wash­ing­ton State oper­a­tion along with Don Benton.

The leg­is­la­tion Erick­sen is “prepar­ing” is dead on arrival in the truest sense of that term, and Erick­sen sure­ly knows that. The Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate will remain con­trolled by Democ­rats in 2021. There’s no rea­son why Erick­sen’s non­sense should con­sume any of the Leg­is­la­ture’s valu­able time and atten­tion, espe­cial­ly giv­en the reduced capac­i­ty com­mit­tees will have for hear­ing bills.

Nonethe­less, Erick­sen and oth­er Trump boost­ers are sig­nal­ing that they’re going to do their darn­d­est to dis­tract us from talk­ing about ideas that real­ly would improve elec­tions here in Wash­ing­ton State, like abol­ish­ing Eyman’s push polls, switch­ing to a two-year cycle for ini­tia­tives and ref­er­en­da, or reform­ing the process for devel­op­ing bal­lot titles, or pro­vid­ing for cit­i­zen review of initiatives.

The dis­cus­sion over whether Wash­ing­ton should have vote at home or not is over. We made a deci­sion over a decade ago that we were going to be a vote at home state like Ore­gon. Since them, we have added drop box­es and pro­vid­ed for pre­paid postage on bal­lot return envelopes to make vot­ing even easier.

The work we’ve done is wide­ly admired around the coun­try, and for good reason.

We’re not going backwards.

Though recent­ly reelect­ed Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman has not always mount­ed a strong defense of vote at home when appear­ing in front of Repub­li­can audi­ences, she did make it clear, when asked about Erick­sen’s leg­is­la­tion by the Belling­ham Her­ald, that she oppos­es it.

“Wash­ing­ton elec­tion offi­cials have worked dili­gent­ly for more than ten years to make the state’s vote-by-mail sys­tem acces­si­ble, secure, and fair,” Wyman told The Belling­ham Her­ald in an email.

“I’m proud of the hard work and thought­ful­ness the Office of the Sec­re­tary of State and coun­ty elec­tion offi­cials have put into mak­ing this sys­tem suc­cess­ful. I believe it has served as a mod­el for oth­er states look­ing to tran­si­tion to full mail-in vot­ing,” she said.

We agree that Wash­ing­ton has served as a mod­el and should con­tin­ue to. This is anoth­er area where we and Kim Wyman agree. We hope that Sec­re­tary of State Wyman will use her influ­ence to urge Erick­sen’s Repub­li­can col­leagues not to cospon­sor his coun­ter­pro­duc­tive leg­is­la­tion. The pan­dem­ic has demon­strat­ed just how use­ful and valu­able vote at home is. Let’s build on that, and dis­cuss ways to make it eas­i­er for peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in our democ­ra­cy, not harder.