New voters face ‘flawed’ system

As Washington state scours its list of more than 3.7 million voters to look for felons and others who don’t belong there, it is also requiring more proof before adding new voters on the rolls.

But the way it handles registrations has prompted a New York group to suggest Washington is being more careful protecting the rights of felons than the rights of new voters.

Each new would-be voter’s name and address must first be compared by computer with other government lists to help verify his or her identity. Even for residents who register by mail, such checks are relatively easy because of the large amounts of computerized data that governments keep for such things as driver’s licenses and Social Security accounts.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University argues that Washington’s system for checking new voters is “extremely flawed” because it relies on two machines matching information from different sources. Those databases often have mistakes like misspelled words, transposed numbers or variations of common first names, argues Justin Levitt of the center’s Democracy Program.

“You might not be properly registered even though you have not done anything improper,” he said.

Katie Blinn, Washington’s assistant director of elections, said the state is only doing what federal law requires as it compiles lists of voters from all 39 counties into a single statewide database. While different states have varying interpretations of the right way to verify information from new voters, Blinn said Washington expects to clear up questions quickly when the computer kicks back a registration.

“When it doesn’t match, it’s coming back (to elections officials) close to immediately,” Blinn said. They contact the registrant to try to clear up the problems, possibly with nothing more than a trip to a county elections office and showing a valid license, government document or utility bill.

But Levitt notes the state’s process for checking up on new voters is much different than removing people who don’t belong because they are deceased, are registered at more than one address, or are felons who haven’t had their voting rights restored.

For felons or other ineligible voters who elections officials believe should be removed from the list, the state must come up with the proof. They remain on the list, and eligible to vote, while the state contacts them and gives them time to contest the decision.

On Monday a King County Superior Court judge made it even more difficult to remove felons from the voter rolls or keep them from registering. Convicted felons can’t be denied the right to vote if they have completed all the terms of their sentence except for paying fines or restitution, Judge Michael Spearman said.

Even before Spearman’s ruling, Levitt said, the way the state handles felons and other voters it wants to take off the rolls is “very good.”

“They seem to have taken great care, on those voters. It’s a shame that they haven’t taken the same care with eligible voters getting on the rolls,” he said.

New registrants who meet all the legal requirements to register but whose information can’t be matched by a computer are not eligible to cast a ballot until the questions are cleared up.

They won’t be sent a ballot in counties like Spokane, which vote entirely by mail. They can go to a voting center on Election Day and cast a “provisional” ballot, but that won’t be counted unless the information is verified.

Levitt said he’s concerned about qualified voters who register shortly before deadlines in big election years and can’t be matched by the computers. They might not be notified and have a chance to provide the proper information before the last votes are counted.

It would be better to put them on the rolls and let them cast a standard ballot while the state takes additional steps to verify their identity, as Oregon does, he said.

Jonathan Bechtle of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation says the state is right, and the Brennan Center wrong, about the way it signs up new voters.

Some of the rules were established in the wake of the 2004 gubernatorial race, which was so close it prompted two recounts and a trial in which the eligibility of certain voters became an issue. As many as 1,600 illegal votes were likely cast, a judge ruled, but there was no way to subtract them from the final tally and determine whether they would have changed Chris Gregoire’s 129-vote victory.

“When you don’t do all the matching like this, you have the kind of problems we had,” Bechtle said. “There’s too great a danger of illegal votes being counted if you have this laissez-faire attitude toward registration.”