Group sues Secretary of State for improper voter registrations
Posted by: Michael Reitz | 10/08/2008 10:00 AM
Under state law, underage voters can register if they will be 18 by the next election. An improper registration is created when an application is accepted from a person who will not attain the age of 18 before the next election. Unwilling to outright reject an underage registration, many counties have resorted to unlawfully sticking these applications in a drawer, often for months at a time.
This improper procedure has led to unnecessary and unacceptable complications that create election errors and dilute legal votes. Over the last eight years, more than 16,000 registrations have been accepted by election officials from underage teens, and dozens have received ballots and cast votes.
This case was filed originally as an administrative complaint in June 2008. An administrative law judge dismissed the complaint in August. The judge found that the Secretary of State is not responsible for preventing illegal registrations but only for removing them from the voter rolls when they are discovered. She said the Secretary of State's efforts in that area were "reasonable," and found no violation in the county auditors' practice of holding on to underage registrations until the voter is 18.
EFF requested an administrative review of the decision, which was conducted by Nixon Handy, the Secretary of State's Director of Elections. In his final decision issued on September 12, Handy upheld the majority of the administrative law judge's ruling.
Today's filing in Thurston County Superior Court is a request for judicial review of the most recent decision.
EFF legal counsel Jonathan Bechtle said, "Everyone can agree that Washington needs honest and accurate elections. This lawsuit will force Secretary Reed to perform his duty to keep the voter rolls accurate and prevent illegal votes. Our action will not disrupt the election in November, but is aimed at a long-term solution to registration problems. All we are asking the court to do is to hold the Secretary of State's office to the same level of accountability that we expect from clerks selling alcohol in convenience stores."
Additional Information
It may be ill advised, but it is apparently not "fraudulent" and certainly not election fraud. Forbes has...
Way to go Evergreen Freedom Foundation. Keep those bozos in line!
So here in Washington a conservative group has to sue a Republican Secretary of State to enforce the law? If it weren't so sad it would be comical.
How about John McCain agreeing to renegotiate loans at current market value. It's bad news not just in Washington but across the board. McCain is a sellout and not much different than Obama.
MEMO: State Elections Division response to Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s lawsuit
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Washington has tightened its monitoring of potential underage voting, and election officials are confident that aggressive screening will prevent underage voting in the upcoming General Election, says state Elections Director Nick Handy. His comment came as Evergreen Freedom Foundation, an Olympia based think tank, filed suit in Thurston County Superior Court seeking review of an administrative law judge’s ruling that upheld the Secretary of State’s Office.
“We have tightened our procedures and we are monitoring the situation very aggressively,” Handy said. “We are working closely with the counties and we are confident that policies and procedures are in place to insure that underage voters are not allowed to vote.
“Our system for keeping ineligible 17 year olds from being added to the state list of voters is working very well.
“We were pleased that out of nearly 1.5 million ballots cast in the primary, we had no instances of underage voters and we don’t expect any problems in the upcoming General Election. There were no problems reported in the 2007 election and four cases of human error that allowed four 17 year olds to vote in the presidential primary this year. Since that time, we have tightened our procedures further and stepped up our monitoring.”
A statewide voter registration database launched in January, 2006, allows state election officials to spot any potential problems and to make sure that citizens who won’t be 18 before Election Day do not get a ballot. State law allows 17 year old to register, as long as they’ll turn 18 by the election, but they aren’t entered on the central database until they actually turn 18.
An independent administrative law judge, Rebekah R. Ross, dismissed an EFF complaint in August. Her written order said, “I find that the evidence does not support a finding that the Secretary of State has a policy or procedure that allows counties to register underage persons, resulting in underage voters. …The fact that there were no actual underage votes in 2007 and only four in 2008 is strong evidence that the current policies are working to prevent underage registration and voting.”
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Nick Handy is at (360) 902-4156.
- Brian Zylstra, Deputy Communications Director, Office of Secretary of State
Brian, the "aggressive screening" sounds good, but the Sept. 26 release of the database shows seven underage registrations for the General Election. The problem still exists and won't go away without solid enforcement at the time of registration. Screenshots of the new underage registrations here:
http://www.libertylive.org/blog_main/post.php?post_id=907