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House-approved election
reform 'disappointing,'
say 13th District lawmakers
Legislation approved
Thursday evening to address problems that emerged during the November
gubernatorial election falls far short of meaningful election reform
that voters have demanded, 13th District
Reps.
Bill Hinkle and Janéa Holmquist warned.
“Citizens all over this state have told us loud and clear that they want
the Legislature to fix our broken election system, and they want us to
do it this year,” said Hinkle, R-Cle Elum. “They have also told us
exactly what changes they want us to make. Unfortunately, the majority
of citizens’ practical meaningful ideas were left out of the legislation
we voted on this evening.”
“When I took the oath of office, I swore to uphold the constitution of
our great state. Our state’s constitution guarantees ‘free and equal’
elections. However, after the fiasco of the recent gubernatorial
election, many voters rightfully have lost faith our election system.
Our citizens not only deserve free and fair elections, it’s their
constitutional right. Unfortunately, the legislation moving forward
makes a lot of empty promises that do very little toward restoring
integrity to the elections process,” said Holmquist, R-Moses Lake,
during her floor remarks.
During floor debate, Hinkle introduced two amendments to Senate Bill
5743 that he said would have transformed it from “title-only”
legislation into meaningful election reform that voters have been
calling for. He and Holmquist said it was “disappointing” that the
Democrat majority did not accept the amendments, which would have
required proof of citizenship when registering to vote and would also
have required all voters to re-register by mid-2006.
“These amendments would have given the people the very reforms they have
said will restore their confidence in our election system,” noted
Hinkle.
“There is no higher priority this session than meaningful election
reform. If voters believe the election system is flawed, they won’t
trust any branch of government,” added Holmquist. “It’s not good enough
to just say we passed election reform. True reforms need to be built
into this legislation. Unfortunately, our proposals were passed up in
favor of the status quo.”
A myriad of voting irregularities and problems came to light following
the 2004 election, particularly in King County, where election officials
are still finding uncounted ballots. Gov. Christine Gregoire later
appointed an “Election Reform Task Force” to meet with citizens around
the state and gather ideas for changes to the voting system.
The Senate bills considered late Thursday night and into Friday morning
by House members originally included some of the reforms requested by
citizens – including a requirement to show photo ID at the polls.
However, Democrats in the House State Government Committee stripped out
the voter ID requirement, as well as other key reforms.
Hinkle had earlier introduced House Bill 2226, a comprehensive election
reform bill that would have, among other things, required voters to
prove they were a U.S. citizen when registering to vote. Democrats did
not give the bill a hearing and it died in committee.
Both Hinkle and Holmquist said amendments offered Thursday evening by
Republicans in the House would have helped restore the integrity of the
election reform bills, which otherwise do little to prevent a recurrence
of the problems seen in November.
Those amendments included:
-
Requiring photo ID at
the time of registration;
-
Requiring photo ID
when voting at the polls;
-
Making provisional,
absentee and poll-place ballots look different so they aren’t
intermingled before being checked to make sure they are valid;
-
Requiring an
additional piece of identification of absentee ballots (in addition
to a signature), such as the date the voter registered;
-
Prohibiting election
workers from “divining” voter intent and enhancing ballots; and
-
Ensuring every vote
has a voter, requiring counties to reconcile the number of voters
with the number of ballots cast, and triggering an automatic re-vote
when discrepancies exceed the margin of victory.
The 13th District
lawmakers expressed further disappointment that lawmakers may soon leave
Olympia without enacting real election reform this year.
“In January, when lawmakers arrived in Olympia, it was clear that our
election system was a mess and needed major changes. So legislators
began jumping on the ‘election reform’ bandwagon, saying they wanted
real changes,” Hinkle remarked. “Now here we are, three months later, at
the point where we are taking votes on these issues. I am proud to say I
stood on the side of real reform.”
“This is the biggest missed opportunity of the 2005 legislative session.
Voters want true election reform, but now the Democratic majority is
sending them ‘election reform lite,’” added Holmquist. “That’s not good
enough. Voting is the sacred right of all who live in a free country. If
we are to preserve that right, we must not let up until we have adopted
true reforms that restore integrity to the process.”
# # #
For more information, contact:
John Handy, Assistant
Communications Director - (360) 786-5758
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