Lawmakers consider bills to change election deadlines

The legislature is considering bipartisan bills to change the date of the presidential primary and reduce deadlines for voter registration.

The bills, suggested by the Secretary of State Kim Wyman, were sponsored by Sen. Mark Miloscia, R-Federal Way in the Senate and Rep. Matt Manweller, R-Moses Lake in the House.

SB 5333 would change the presidential primary to the second Tuesday of March, would allow voters to not declare party affiliation and the option for voters to write in candidates for presidential primary elections.

HB 1468 would change the voter registration deadline to 11 days before an election or primary, change the deadline for updating registration information from 29 days to 28 days and transfer voter registration information through a new state database.

Lori Augino, Elections Director for the Secretary of State, said SB 5333 is designed to address issues which surfaced during the 2016 presidential primary and make Washington more relevant in the nomination process.

“Right now what we see is just candidates coming at the end of the cycle to raise money,” Augino said. “We want to change that dynamic and just set that date to earlier in the law.”

Miloscia said he sees the bill as a way for Washington State to have their interests represented on the same level as states which have earlier primaries. He said currently, candidates for a presidential nomination only come to Washington for fundraising events and don’t spend serious time campaigning for electoral votes.

“The fourth Tuesday in May is way too late to have any sort of meaningful impact in a presidential election,” Miloscia said. “We harm our state, we become … only an ATM for presidential candidates.”

The bill passed the Senate with 34 yes votes and 15 no votes. Sen. Bob Hasegawa, D-Beacon Hill, who voted against the bill, said he didn’t see a problem with changing the presidential primary, but he could not support removing write-in candidates or allowing voters to participate in a presidential primary without declaring party affiliation.

“There’s a number of reasons, but the deal-breaker was the option to write in candidates,” Hasegawa said. “I think in a democracy, you should be able to vote for who you want.”

Augino said the election deadlines bill, which passed the House 84–14, was crafted to address issues with last year’s general election and primary. The 29-day deadline always falls on a Monday, she said. The last deadline fell on Columbus Day which is a Postal holiday. The Secretary of State’s office had to make an exception and included registrations postmarked from the next day.

“That 29-day deadline is just going to notoriously going to fall on a holiday,” Augino said. “Once a year, maybe once every couple of years. Which can be a problem and can run afoul of Federal law.”

The bill will give auditors the option to allow new voters to register in person, by mail or through electronic means until 11 days before the election. Augino said the current system is antiquated and the majority of voters register online and when updating or getting a driver’s license or ID.

Manweller, the prime sponsor of the bill, said some had argued for a shorter deadline of eight days, but there was concern administrators would not be able to mail out late registration ballots in time.

“I thought 11 was a decent compromise,” Manweller said. “It’s plenty of time to get somebody a ballot, but not so rushed that we would make mistakes.”

The bill also asks for $5.8 million to create a database to modernize voter registration to make processing address updates, name changes and other voter information more efficient.

Augino said she had heard from some auditors who did not support address changes that close to Election Day, but the office was willing to negotiate and take small steps to move toward their goal of consistent deadlines.

Heidi Hunt, the auditor for Adams County, said she could support parts of both bills. She said if the election had been earlier, Washington voters might have had more choices in the Republican primary.

“With the primary being in May, pretty much all of the candidates in the field had been whittled down already,” Hunt said. “You got a ballot with all of those candidates’ names on it, but you knew that many of them had officially withdrawn already.”

Hunt said she could support removing the write-in option from the presidential primary ballots. Often, she said, people just write in their pet’s or neighbor’s name and it has very little impact on the election as a whole.

Hunt also supported the changing of election deadlines, as long as county staff had enough time to process the registration and mail the ballots and the voter had time to return them.

“I’m all for any deadline that it takes to get people qualified to register to vote,” Hunt said. “Because nothing breaks my heart more than the day after the deadline, someone coming in.”

Both bills await hearings in the State Government committees of their respective chambers.