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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Voting system will see changes


At a public meeting Tuesday evening, Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton makes the case for her proposal to have all voters in the county vote by mail. 
 (Holly Pickett / The Spokesman-Review)

Voting in Spokane County will change by Jan. 1, to one of three options, County Auditor Vicky Dalton said Tuesday.

The cheapest of the three options – and the one that offers the most accessibility to voters with disabilities – is for all voters to get their ballots in the mail, Dalton said. That’s the option she will recommend to Spokane County commissioners later this month, and they’re set to make a decision on July 26.

A majority of county voters, 57 percent as of this month, already receive their ballots in the mail. That’s up from about 17 percent in 2000.

“It is the trend,” Dalton told about 20 people gathered for a public meeting on voting changes. “We have to face the fact that not very many people go to the polls to vote.”

The county operates 86 polling sites, where voters who don’t get a mail ballot can go on Election Day. But a voter must go to a specific site where his or her name is on the books to cast a traditional ballot.

Federal law will require a voting device for those with disabilities at each polling site next year. Under that option, buying the machines would cost as much as $750,000, and maintaining them would cost as much as $30,000 per year. Hiring extra poll workers to help operate them would cost about $20,000 per election.

Because only about 30 percent of the ballots in most elections are cast at the poll site, the county could cut way back on the number of polling stations and a voter could go to any one of 15 “regional polling centers,” Dalton said.

But that would require even more machines for voters with disabilities because federal law would require enough to handle the heavy turnout of a presidential election. It would also require all polling sites be linked to a computer with an electronic list that would record when each voter cast a ballot, so no one could vote more than once.

Under that option, the county might need to spend as much as $3.5 million on new equipment, and about $112,000 per year on maintenance and training.

Or the county could convert all voters to mail-in ballots, and have three or four “drop off centers” on Election Day, for voters who want the feeling of going to the poll site, or who want to avoid paying for a stamp.

Although the county would still have to buy about 15 voting machines for disabled voters, it would save money – compared to current costs – on salaries and maintenance, Dalton said. With some of the savings, the county could take the devices for disabled voters to senior centers, nursing homes and other locations in the weeks before an election, as a service to those voters.

Linda McClain, of the Coalition for the Responsible Disabled, said she would support a vote-by-mail system if it was paired with mobile voting assistance and “skilled, nonpartisan advocates to help with the process.”

“There’s a lot of people that don’t vote because there’s nobody there to help them with the process,” McClain said.

Ed Kennedy, another member of the coalition, agreed. But he said this wasn’t a case of disabled people wanting something just for themselves. As the population ages, more and more people will be needing some sort of assistance with voting, he said.

Dan Meckel, a Spokane Valley voter, said he’s worried that voting by mail will lead to complacency, and could result in more people voting illegally.

“Polling place voting is, to me, where it should be,” Meckel said.

Ann Murphy, of the League of Women Voters, said that organization is split between keeping the poll sites and switching to all-mail voting. It opposes forcing the entire state to go to mail-in ballots, but would support allowing voters a choice by having a few polling stations, as Dalton is recommending.

“There probably will never be a perfect system. We think it is time we tried this one,” Murphy said.