Secretary of State Reed unveils election reform proposals

By NEIL MODIE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER  07 January 2005

As two citizens filed the first challenges to the endlessly contested governor's election yesterday, Secretary of State Sam Reed proposed a package of reforms aimed at averting such election chaos in the future.

Meanwhile, Dean Logan, King County's top elections official, added fuel to Republican efforts to overturn the 129-vote victory of Democrat Christine Gregoire. He said "somewhere in the range of 300" provisional ballots of unknown validity were wrongly fed into the county's vote-counting machines on Election Day.

While that number far exceeded Gregoire's margin of victory over Republican Dino Rossi, Logan said that statistically, it was highly unlikely that those questionable ballots could have changed the outcome of the race. "But I don't want to give people the impression that I don't think it's a serious issue," he added.

Reed unveiled reform measures that include moving the September primary to the third Tuesday in June, requiring election workers to send written notices to voters whose ballot signatures are missing or questionable, and requiring absentee ballots to be postmarked by the Friday before the election or received before polls close on election day.

Absentees currently must be merely postmarked by election day.

Another of Reed's proposals could put a crimp in the increasingly lucrative business of paying people to solicit voters' signatures for initiative and referendum petitions. The Republican secretary of state said he wants to emulate an Oregon law requiring such solicitors to be paid by the hour, not by the signature, "to remove incentives for cheating."

As for moving the primary ahead three months as Reed has proposed before, but state lawmakers have rejected he noted the short time frame between the current primary and the general election. Of this year's nine-week-plus war over the governor's election, he said, "What would happen if this were to happen during a primary?"

Many legislators oppose an earlier primary because it would give them less time to raise campaign money, which they are barred from doing between 30 days before the start and 30 days after the end of a legislative session. Reed said the solution might be to allow lawmakers to resume fund raising upon adjournment of a legislative session occurring in an election year.

Gregoire, trying to fend off a Republican campaign to build popular support for a gubernatorial revote, quickly issued a statement endorsing Reed's call for reforms.

  
  
Two citizens acting on their own, Arthur Coday Jr. of Shoreline and Daniel Stevens of Fall City, filed papers with the state Supreme Court to contest the election. Stevens' filing said the victory margin is within the margin of error "to the point that error must be assumed as a certainty."

State Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance said the party had nothing to do with either challenge.

The GOP has been scouring prison records, death certificates and other data to try to document illegal voting, especially in Democrat-leaning King County. It is expected to file its own challenge.

Reed declared Gregoire the winner of the governor's race Dec. 30 after a hand recount gave her the 129-vote victory margin out of 2.9 million votes cast. Rossi had prevailed in two earlier tabulations.

Democrats contended yesterday that a new gubernatorial election isn't allowed under state law or the state constitution. The constitution requires governors to be elected at the same time as legislative candidates, in a general election, and not in a special or other election, said a legal analysis written by Democratic attorney Jenny Durkan

Republicans and Rossi supporters have said a revote is necessary because the margin of error in the election exceeded Gregoire's margin of victory.

King County election officials admitted earlier this week that a number of provisional ballots were fed into polling-place AccuVote machines before it was determined whether those voters were eligible to cast ballots. But Logan's disclosure yesterday was the first acknowledgement that the number exceeded Gregoire's margin of victory.

Provisional ballots are issued to voters who go to polling places but aren't listed on registration rolls in the precinct, sometimes because they aren't registered but sometimes owing to clerical errors or because a voter went to the wrong precinct or signed a poll book on the wrong line.

Earlier yesterday, Logan predicted that the number of wrongly tabulated provisional ballots would be "at the lower end" of a range of between 30 and 300. "But I think it's difficult to get to a point that it definitively indicates that it would have impacted the outcome of the election," Logan said.

ELECTION PROPOSALS

Some key provisions in Secretary of State Sam Reed's election reform package:

Move primary from September to the third Tuesday in June, allowing more time for military and overseas voters to receive and return ballots, for officials to prepare for the general election and to resolve any recounts in a primary.

Counties must tabulate every valid ballot in their possession on election night.

Absentee ballots must be postmarked by the Friday before the primary or general election, or the ballots must be received by close of polls on Election Day.