Remove partisan stain from state elections

During the past eight months, I served on a team of lawyers representing Washington's secretary of state in the many court challenges to last November's governor's election. I had the opportunity to watch Secretary of State Sam Reed, his staff and our elected county auditors as they wrestled with Democratic and Republican complaints about the electoral process.

Reed and almost all the auditors stuck to a middle-of-the-road, nonpartisan and professional approach, regardless of their personal political affiliations. I found this both impressive and reassuring.

But what was less reassuring was the fact that both the Democrats and the Republicans expected these elected officials to lean one way or the other based on their individual party affiliation. And many voters, especially Republicans, were convinced that the election errors in King County were a sinister plot by partisan election officers, although Chelan County Judge John Bridges found no evidence of fraud. Earlier shenanigans by partisan secretaries of state in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 weakened Democrats' confidence in election fairness.

Robert Pastor of American University, who directs the Center for Democracy and Election Management, recently noted that the United States is one of only 18 nations among the world's 117 electoral democracies that allow incumbent partisan government officeholders to control the conduct of elections. He wrote that "on all 10 dimensions of election administration the United States scores near the bottom of electoral democracies." One of the key reasons is that our elections are supervised by partisan elected officials, which opens those officers to pressure from their own parties and reduces public confidence in the process.

Every democracy deserves a credible election system, one that is not only completely nonpartisan but also appears fair and nonpartisan to the general public.

Voters will never be fully convinced that our election managers are impartial so long as they are partisan elected officials or appointed by partisan officeholders. In a democracy, voter confidence in the results of elections is as important as the outcome of any particular race. In a "nation of laws, not men," we cannot depend solely on the commitment and courage of individuals like Reed to resist partisan pressure and keep to the straight and narrow path.

The best electoral structure for Washington would be the one that is used in a majority of the world's democracies: a nonpartisan, independent election commission overseeing a nonpartisan professional election staff. This is the approach that our federal government insists on for other countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Nicaragua.

But we needn't go far away for models. Next door, in Canada, elections since 1920 have been overseen by a "chief electoral officer" appointed by Parliament, with permanent tenure until age 65. He can be removed only for cause by the governor general (the queen's nonpartisan representative), and then only upon the recommendation of both houses of Parliament.

The current chief electoral officer is Jean-Pierre Kingsley, a former hospital administrator and civil servant. He and the election staffers he oversees throughout Canada cannot belong to any political party — much like our nonpartisan judges here.

In light of Washington's recent election imbroglio, this would be a perfect time for the Legislature to overhaul our election system and establish a mechanism which, if successful, might be copied throughout the United States.

Here's a proposal: Washington's state and local elections would be governed by a seven-member commission appointed to seven-year terms by the governor and confirmed by a two-thirds vote of each house of the Legislature. Terms would be overlapping, assuring stability and continuity. Supermajority confirmation would ensure that the appointees are acceptable to both parties.

The commission would draft rules governing elections, oversee the voting process and decide disputed elections. The commission would appoint a statewide chief elections officer. At the local level, nonpartisan elected or appointed county auditors could continue to manage elections under the commission's supervision. County auditors and all other full-time election employees would be forbidden to belong to a political party.

In one of the recent gubernatorial election battles, Washington Supreme Court Justice Tom Chambers observed "a recent trend of political interest groups seeking judicial intervention" in election disputes. Chambers wrote: "In my view, there is little to commend judicial intervention into the electoral process before the process is complete.... The necessary procedures of judicial decision making do not lend themselves to instant resolution of electoral issues."

The commission proposed above would become expert in election laws and would resolve disputes quickly and fairly. Voters would not have to wait eight months to know for sure who their governor is. Commission rulings could be appealed to the state Supreme Court, but that court would overturn the commission only if a decision were arbitrary or capricious.

From a legal standpoint, these changes are not hard to put into place. They simply require the willingness of legislators (or the voters through initiative) to set partisanship aside. But a complete revision of our election machinery is needed to ensure not only that the system is impartial, but that the voters are completely confident in its fairness and impartiality.