Speaker: Changes seen in state elections
State elections official speaks in Moses Lake
MOSES LAKE — A statewide voter database, the movement of the primary date and the majority switch to all-mail elections have all changed the way the state administers elections in the wake of voting problems in 2004.
That's what Pamela Floyd, the assistant director of elections in the Office of Secretary of State Sam Reed, told members of the Rotary Club of Moses Lake Wednesday at the Moses Lake Golf Club. Floyd spoke to election reforms in place of Reed, who had been previously scheduled to speak but was unable to attend Wednesday's meeting.
While national changes were brought after election irregularities in Florida in 2000, the razor-thin governor's race prompted statewide changes in Washington. The state was sued 17 times, from both sides of the political aisle, following the 2004 election.
"What the judge found was, there was no fraud," Floyd said. "But there were human errors."
But reforms like a statewide voter registration database have helped improve all that, Floyd said. Funded through the Help America Vote Act, Floyd said the database allows for specific comparisons of voters moving from one county to another. All databases had previously only spanned countywide, and Floyd called the change to a statewide database the biggest change in elections in 60 years.
She said while there is still a need to smooth out some of the bumps in the system, having it centralized does allow for removal of some of the duplicates of voters who move across county lines. Since the first of the year Floyd said 55,000 voters, the majority of which were duplicates, have been removed from the database.
Another recent addition has been the securing of electronic voting equipment for voters with disabilities, now required under law. State law mandates certain security measures on the machines including a paper audit trail, or a printout in which voters could see an itemized list for voters to review before submitting their vote.
"Everything that Sam stands for is the transparency and fairness of elections," Floyd said, referring to Reed.
The primary date itself has been moved back from September to August beginning next year, allowing more time between the primary and general election, especially for military personnel and workers overseas.
But Floyd said there are currently other problems with military voting, especially with ballots not getting to military voters in time for elections.
"The answer is online voting," Floyd said. "We need some kind of online voting for the military." While she is not advocating online voting for every other voter, Floyd said communication should allow for military personnel overseas to vote online.
Other reforms may be topics for the Legislature in the near future, such as the use of all nine digits on a person's social security number being placed on drivers licenses required to vote.
The expense of running both a polling place and by-mail election is one reason cited by many counties for making the switch. Grant County Auditor Bill Varney said Wednesday that the change in Grant County has brought a spike in turnout in recent school elections.
Issues will always be the driving force for what brings voters to the polls, even if all elections are conducted through the mail. But, Floyd said, "certainly absentee makes it easier for folks."
Floyd said after her remarks Wednesday that she anticipated all-mail elections to become a statewide phenomenon soon. Washington's most populous King County will be voting to have all-mail elections in 2007, and 34 of the state's 39 counties have made their decision to hold all future elections by mail.