County mulls switching to vote by mail

Jon Gambrell, The Bellingham Herald    08 December 2004

Whatcom County may entirely eliminate poll voting and become a vote-by-mail county next year.

In a resolution introduced to the County Council Tuesday night, the county would have all of its more than 106,000 registered voters cast ballots by mail.

Currently, six of the county's 119 precincts vote only by mail.

Changing the rules might not be that big a leap for county voters, said Whatcom County Auditor Shirley Forslof. Out of the 91,497 people who voted in the Nov. 2 election, more than 66,000 cast absentee ballots.

"The majority of voters are saying they like voting by mail," Forslof said. "The majority of Whatcom County voters have made that choice."

The County Council plans to hold a public hearing on the possible voting change at its Jan. 11 meeting.

The vote-by-mail change stems from the Help America Voting Act of 2002, which forces election staff across the nation to abandon punch card-style ballots in federal races by 2006.

The state will provide $580,000 to help with the transition, Forslof said. Outfitting the county's polls with touch-screen voting machines would cost about $2.3 million, she said, but the state funding would cover the entire cost of switching to vote by mail.

Instead of the punch card ballot absentee voters are used to, new mail ballots would be a "fill in the bubble" style, Forslof said.

To make the whole county vote by mail, the Auditor's Office would have to create new precincts with fewer than 200 registered poll voters each, as required by the Revised Code of Washington.

If the County Council would agree to the resolution proposed Tuesday, the Auditor's Office would redraw the county's precincts, which the council would later vote on.

Changing to vote by mail wouldn't just affect poll workers, it would simplify political campaigns as well, said Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University.

"You've got to time things - absentee ballots come out anytime from Oct. 15 to 17, then you got others who won't vote until Nov. 2," he said. "It simplifies things and makes it a lot easier for people to manage a campaign."