3,000 denied right to vote

By Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times staff reporter  22 September 2004

About 2,000 residents of King County and 1,000 in Snohomish County were denied the right to vote in last week's primary election because they neglected to mark a box on their voter-registration form to attest that they were U.S. citizens.

Now the state says that was done in error, and those residents will be registered to vote in November's general election.

It's all part of the confusion spurred by the 2000 presidential election and voting problems in Florida.

The national Help America Vote law was passed in 2002 and called for major changes in the way elections are run. Under the act, states are required to replace punch-card voting systems and to create a computerized statewide voter-registration list and a permanent paper voting record.

But Congress did not allocate money immediately to make the changes, and states were allowed to apply for delays. Washington applied for, and was granted, a waiver until 2006.

However, certain changes were required immediately, said Pam Floyd, voter-registration-services manager with the Secretary of State's Office, which administers elections in Washington.

The state believed that the citizenship check box on the voter-registration form was required immediately, but two weeks before the primary the state received a letter from federal elections officials saying it didn't need to enforce the citizenship box.

"It caught us by surprise," said Floyd, adding that it was too late to fix it before the primary. "Voter registration was closed by state law, so we decided not to make the change but look at it when the primary was over."

She didn't know how many people were affected statewide.

At a meeting earlier this week, the state decided to make the citizenship box advisory only and to notify all 39 counties that they don't have to enforce the check box. 
  
The box must be checked when the state's waiver ends in 2006.

Dean Logan, head of King County Elections, said there were 1,953 pending registrations in King County where residents failed to mark the citizenship box and were denied registration for the primary.

Logan said he has long had problems with this rule.

"These are people signing an oath saying they were 18 and met the qualifications, but didn't mark the check box. It seems odd it would deny registration," Logan said. He said those people's forms will now be processed and they will be given voter-registration cards.

Wendy Mauch, Snohomish County voter-registration supervisor, said it was her impression that the county is required by the federal government to register only voters who had checked the citizenship box. She said she was not aware that the state had rescinded the policy.

Snohomish County officials had been returning forms to voters who did not check the box, and Mauch said there were 1,094 who weren't able to vote in the primary because of it.