Reed urges earlier elections

OLYMPIA – Saying that Washington’s election schedule “invites a train wreck,” the state’s top elections official on Wednesday called on lawmakers to move the September primary elections a month earlier.

Secretary of State Sam Reed also wants to allow voters to register online and to expand the time frame during which lawmakers can accept campaign cash.

Reed will push for the changes in the coming legislative session, which starts Jan. 9. Election reform was a big topic in the statehouse last session, after months of recounting and court battles left Gov. Christine Gregoire with a 133-vote victory out of the millions of votes cast.

“The governor’s race was a wake-up call to the state of Washington,” Reed said. “… Unfortunately, I’m here to tell you this morning that the phone is still ringing.”

Specifically, Reed wants to:

• Move the primary from the third Tuesday in September to the third Tuesday in August.

• Require military and overseas ballots to be mailed out 30 days before an election.

• Allow online voter registration for people with a state driver’s license or state identity card. That way, state officials would already have a copy of each voter’s photo and signature, Reed said.

Some lawmakers are leery of online voter registration.

“You know how easy it is to pick up somebody’s driver’s license number and then go from there?” said Sen. Dave Schmidt, R-Bothell. “Too many people can sneak through the cracks.”

Under Reed’s proposal, online applicants would have to declare that they are citizens, although Reed said the state’s been unable to come up with a practical way to verify that. He said there’s no federal database of citizens, for example. But for any non-citizens who do get caught voting illegally, Reed said, “there are very, very stiff penalties.”

Since 2002, the state has allowed candidates to file for office online. Letting voters register online, Reed said, is “the next logical step.” Arizona, he said, already permits it.

Among Reed’s other proposals:

• Make voting machines available to disabled people as soon as mail ballots are sent out – 20 days before an election.

• Make it a gross misdemeanor to mislead people about what initiative they’re signing a petition for.

• Shrink the window of time during which lawmakers can’t accept campaign cash. Donations are now banned 30 days before the legislative session, during the session, and 30 days after. The law was passed to avoid the prospect of lawmakers collecting cash while they’re voting on bills, and Reed wants to retain the ban during the session. But he’d start the ban on Christmas Day and end it when the session concludes. Lawmakers have long complained about the time limit, saying that it gives their challengers a fund-raising advantage.

Reed said his top priority is moving the primary to August. As things stand now, he said, county election officials have just four or five days between the time that the primary results are certified and the time when counties must mail ballots to citizens living abroad. If there’s ever a close primary and a lengthy recount, he and many lawmakers say, it would be impossible to hold the November election on time.

“It just flat-out couldn’t happen,” said Schmidt. “So far, we’ve just been lucky.”

Reed tried to change the primary date last year. It passed the House almost unanimously, but it collapsed in the Senate when Lt. Gov. Brad Owen ruled that the change would require approval by two-thirds of the Senate. Reed said a recent federal court ruling, however, means that it would now take only a simple majority.

Reed’s staff is also working on a “statewide voter registration database” to detect people voting multiple times, felons voting illegally and people voting for dead people. The database would be compared to prison, police and court records. The state would forward information about any suspected illegal voters to county prosecutors.

“We’re confident that we’ll be up and operating by the first of the year,” Reed said.