Election overhaul eluded legislators, but tweaks were made to system

OLYMPIA — Lawmakers passed seven bills aimed at improving the election system this past session, but don't expect the changes to prevent a repeat of the chaotic 2004 gubernatorial contest.

There were widespread calls for revamping the system after Gov. Christine Gregoire won the election by 129 votes after two recounts, the closest governor's race on record. The tumultuous election was replete with lost ballots, mismatched signatures, and dead people and convicted felons casting ballots. Republican candidate Dino Rossi is challenging the result in court.

The laws just passed by the Legislature, which include requiring voters to show identification at the polls and creating paper trails for electronic voting machines, will help resolve many problems but in "that close of an election we're always going to have warts and glitches," Secretary of State Sam Reed said.

He predicted the 2004 election likely would have been contested even with the new rules in place.

Overall, the laws passed by the Legislature address nuts-and-bolts elections issues that most people won't notice, said Todd Donovan, a political-science professor at Western Washington University.

"If you've got elected officials and party officials divided on whether the elections are credible, there's no amount of reforms that are going to get public opinion to shift on whether elections are more credible," he said. "Especially these bookkeeping moves. They're good, healthy things, but they're not going to change people's minds."

Lawmakers failed to pass a bill that would have been sure to catch public attention — moving the state primary from September to August. The proposal, called for by many election experts, would have given officials more time to get out absentee and overseas military ballots to voters in the general election. Another expected benefit was quicker election results because absentee voters could get their ballots sooner and return them sooner.

"When I look at what the Legislature did, it had considerable accomplishments on the small things and shied away from the big issues," said David Olson, a political-science professor at the University of Washington. "The failure of advancing the primary was a big issue. That's a hard vote for incumbents because they are advantaged" by the current system.

Having the primary in September makes it more difficult for challengers to take on incumbents in the general election because they have a compressed period to campaign, Olson said. Washington state's primary is among the nation's latest state primaries.

The most significant bill passed, Senate Bill 5499, made numerous tweaks in the election system, such as:

• Requiring provisional and absentee ballots to be distinguishable from other ballots, either by coloring or using a bar code. In the 2004 election, some provisional ballots — those cast by voters who are outside their precinct — were accidentally fed through voting machines before it was verified they came from properly registered voters. Because they looked like all the other ballots, the votes could not be pulled back for verification.

• Requiring people who vote at the polls to show identification. A state election task force appointed by Gregoire recommended requiring a driver's license or state identification card. The law passed by the Legislature allows for a variety of things to be used for identification, including utility bills, paychecks and bank statements.

• Changing the vote difference needed to trigger an automatic hand recount in statewide elections from 150 votes to 1,000 votes. The difference still has to be less than one quarter of 1 percent of all votes, too.

In addition, the Legislature passed bills that require electronic voting machines to produce paper records, allow counties to switch to mail-only elections and require Reed's office to prepare a manual of election laws and rules.

Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, said she wasn't overly impressed with the bills passed this year. For example, she said, the bill requiring voter identification didn't go far enough. "You can give them a utility bill," she said. "I think it's outrageous."

Roach, ranking Republican on the Senate Government Operations and Elections Committee, says voters were not happy about the state's election system before the session started "and they're still not happy."

Sen. Jim Kastama, D-Puyallup, chairman of the committee, said the bills passed by the Legislature are more significant than critics give them credit for. "So much work was put into those bills, to have them treated so lightly I find troubling," he said.

He also contends this won't be the last time the Legislature looks at election changes. "Fixing the elections is not a one-time deal," he said. "This is going to be an ongoing process."

Andrew Garber: 360-943-9882 or agarber@seattletimes.com