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.
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:
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.
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