Reed hopes to alter rules for primary ballots

OLYMPIA – Secretary of Sam Reed said Friday that he will push a measure to make sure that voters who fail to check a party box on their primary election ballot will still have their votes counted.

Reed said the legislative fix is important, especially after nearly 100,000 votes were invalidated in the state’s partisan races in September’s primary because voters failed to indicate if they wanted to vote as a Democrat or Republican, as required by law.

“I think that’s a travesty,” Reed said. “I think most of them, it was clearly a mistake, and people were very disappointed their ballots weren’t counted.”

Some counties have separate ballots, where voters choose to vote on either a Democratic, Republican or unaffiliated ballot. Others use consolidated ballots which include candidates from both major parties. On those consolidated ballots, if voters failed to pick a party, voted in partisan races and also voted for the nonpartisan judicial races, they only had their votes counted on the judicial and other nonpartisan races and bond measures.

Reed’s measure would allow counties to count the partisan votes in cases where a voter fails to mark a party, but continues to vote a straight party ticket.

“I think that’s fair,” he said.

In August, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate Washington’s “top two” primary system – in which voters pick their favorite candidates for each office, regardless of party.

Reed said that even though voters already had to vote by party in the 2004 election, many are still angry about it. While there was widespread advertising before the 2004 election to educate voters, this year there was not, though there were directions mailed with every ballot.

To help allay any confusion, Reed also wants lawmakers to sponsor a measure for a statewide voters pamphlet to be sent out before the primary for each even-numbered year. Currently, a statewide voters pamphlet is distributed each year for the general election.

“I think it’s very, very important, particularly because so many of these judicial races are being decided in the primary,” he said.

Reed also urged lawmakers in the coming legislative session to sponsor other measures, including eliminating the unaffiliated ballot in the presidential preference primary and to allow online voter registration.