Ways & Means declines to take up NPI’s even year elections bill, ending its 2024 run

The Ways & Means Com­mit­tee of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate today chose not to con­sid­er NPI’s leg­is­la­tion to give cities and towns the free­dom to choose their own elec­tion tim­ing dur­ing its final meet­ing before this evening’s oppo­site cham­ber fis­cal cut­off, end­ing its remark­able run in the 2024 leg­isla­tive session.

House Bill 1932, prime spon­sored by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mia Gregerson (D‑33rd Dis­trict: South King Coun­ty) became the first even year elec­tions bill in mod­ern times to get a floor vote ear­li­er this month when it passed out of the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on a bipar­ti­san vote. The bill would have allowed cities and towns that are cur­rent­ly forced by state law to hold their reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled elec­tions in low turnout odd years to switch to high­er turnout even years.

The Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment & Elec­tions Com­mit­tee kept the bill alive last week by amend­ing it and giv­ing it a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion, but in a behind-the-scenes pow­er move, it was shipped over to the bud­get-writ­ing Ways & Means Com­mit­tee instead of being sent up to Rules, despite being a pol­i­cy bill that had an “inde­ter­mi­na­tive” fis­cal impact as assessed by OFM staff.

(OFM is the Office of Finan­cial Man­age­ment. It is an exec­u­tive branch agency, and one of its duties is to ana­lyze the poten­tial cost of pro­posed legislation.)

At a hear­ing last Fri­day, cur­rent and for­mer elec­tions admin­is­tra­tors argued the bill would be cost­ly, desta­bi­liz­ing, and infea­si­ble to imple­ment, even though evi­dence and expe­ri­ence from around the coun­try demon­strate that it is a proven reform that can increase and diver­si­fy turnout while also sav­ing tax dollars.

Tes­ti­fy­ing in oppo­si­tion were Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs, for­mer Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Sam Reed, and audi­tors Mar­i­anne Nichols of Pend Oreille Coun­ty and Vicky Dal­ton of Spokane County.

“We ask you as pol­i­cy­mak­ers to pri­or­i­tize what is best for the health of our democ­ra­cy,” I respond­ed in my pre­pared tes­ti­mo­ny. “In this case, that is clear: Adopt the only avail­able elec­toral reform that can as much as dou­ble turnout in local elec­tions while also diver­si­fy­ing it. Elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion should serve elec­toral jus­tice; elec­toral jus­tice should not be sub­servient to elec­tion administration.”

Shore­line City Coun­cilmem­ber Chis Roberts and Shan­non Grimes from Sight­line Insti­tute joined me in mak­ing the case for the bill.

Shan­non fol­lowed up this morn­ing with a pol­i­cy note exam­in­ing the objec­tions to House Bill 1932 and review­ing the schol­ar­ly research on the sub­ject. That post is a must-read, and we encour­age all Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers to check it out.

We’re dis­ap­point­ed that HB 1932’s jour­ney has come to an end, but we’re very proud of how far it got through the leg­isla­tive process in the face of fierce (and mis­guid­ed) oppo­si­tion from Wash­ing­ton’s elec­tion administrators.

It is not unusu­al for a bill fac­ing more than token oppo­si­tion to require a mul­ti-year effort to pass. That has been true for many bills that we have worked on. For exam­ple, we ini­tial­ly ran our leg­is­la­tion to get Tim Eyman’s push polls repealed in 2019. But it did­n’t reach Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk until last year — 2023.

In the span of a lit­tle over a year, our team and NPI’s allies took this bill from the draw­ing board to more than halfway through the state­house. Plen­ty of good bills nev­er get even beyond a hear­ing in their first or sec­ond ses­sions. Since Jan­u­ary of 2023, we’ve got­ten three con­sec­u­tive “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tions for this leg­is­la­tion (includ­ing for its sib­ling, SB 5732) from pol­i­cy com­mit­tees in the House and Sen­ate, plus this ses­sion’s floor vote in the House that I men­tioned earlier.

I am con­fi­dent that we’ll be back in the 2025 long ses­sion with an even bet­ter bill for law­mak­ers to con­sid­er. This is an idea that vot­ers love and sup­port — an idea with unmatched poten­tial for mak­ing Wash­ing­ton’s elec­tions more inclusive.

On behalf of our team, NPI’s Kathy Saka­hara and I would like to thank every­one who helped cham­pi­on House Bill 1932 this ses­sion, especially:

• State Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Mia Gregerson, Darya Fari­var, Bill Ramos, Sharlett Mena, Chris Stearns, and Joe Fitzgibbon
• State Sen­a­tors Javier Valdez, Pat­ty Kud­er­er, Bob Hasegawa, and Sam Hunt
• Alan Durn­ing and Shan­non Grimes at Sight­line Institute
• Jazmine Smith and the Wash­ing­ton Bus
• Cindy Black and Fix Democ­ra­cy First
• Abi­gail Leong and Fuse Washington
• Alex Alston, Caron Cargill, and the Wash­ing­ton Vot­ing Jus­tice Coaltiion
• Joseph Lach­man and ACRS
• Kamau Chege and Lau­ren Allen with the Wash­ing­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Alliance
• Kenia Pere­gri­no and Wash­ing­ton For Equi­table Representation
• Shasti Con­rad and the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party
• Pro­fes­sors Zoltan Haj­nal and G. Agustin Markarian
• Can­dice Bock and the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Cities
• Shore­line City Coun­cilmem­ber Chris Roberts
• Port Ange­les City Coun­cilmem­ber Lind­sey Schromen-Wawrin
• Our good friend Ron Davis

At NPI, we believe in enjoy­ing the jour­ney. We thor­ough­ly enjoyed cham­pi­oning House Bill 1932 this year with so many won­der­ful and sup­port­ive allies and will trea­sure all the hap­py mem­o­ries that our work togeth­er cre­at­ed. In the com­ing months, we’ll have more to share about our plans for the 2025 session.