Spin Control: 2024 is over, but some lawmakers are still thinking about elections

For most of us, after a year like 2024, future elections are about the furthest thing from our minds.

Not so with state lawmakers, who, even before the 2025 Washington Legislature convenes on Jan. 13, have proposed several changes to state election law.

In a sense, this isn’t surprising, as legislators operate on a corollary of H.G. Wells’ axiom that “No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.”

Substitute “existing law” for “someone else’s draft,” and you have an explanation for much of what legislators strive to do. This is especially true on a subject like elections, on which many consider themselves experts, as they had to win at least one to get where they are.

Among “prefiled bills” – those for which eager legislators couldn’t wait for the opening gavel before having ideas typed up for introduction – are proposals to change the way presidential primary ballot envelopes are designed, to require the state to provide voters’ pamphlets in even-numbered years and to lower the majority needed for school districts to pass bond measures.

The proposed change to the presidential primary would move the party affiliation affirmation – which must be marked to fulfill a requirement of national party rules – from the outside of the return envelope to somewhere inside the combination of inner security envelope or ballot.

Presidential primary ballot envelopes are designed that way to assist with sorting. After the signature on the outside is verified, the envelope goes in one basket or pile if it’s marked Republican, another if it’s marked Democrat and a third if it’s not marked at all. The R ballots are opened and run through the scanners separate from the D ballots, so if someone marked Republican and voted for a Democratic candidate, it won’t count, and vice versa.

The reason for such a change, as stated in the opening section of the bill, is that every four years when the presidential primary is held, lawmakers and other elected officials are contacted by upset voters.

“Often, the concern is that just by seeing the party preference, an outside observer would know that voter’s presidential candidate vote,” the bill states.

Rather than change the law and complicate the process for elections officials, lawmakers might buck up and try to allay constituents’ concerns themselves, suggesting that the vast majority of the community is not trying to figure out how you voted, even the ones who might be trying won’t know for whom you voted because all the candidates will get some votes, and the mail carrier, the drop box emptier and the ballot sorter can’t possibly remember your party selection from among all the ballots they handle in a given day.

Lawmakers should acknowledge that the real reason most voters are complaining is they cherish Washington’s 90-year tradition of not having partisan primaries. Having to mark R or D once every four years sticks in their craw. For that, the solution is not a state law, but a change in party rules that would accept the state’s results without such a nod of somewhat limited and temporary fealty to one party. But for legislators, changing a law might seem easier than bucking their national party leadership.

County elections officials would likely be unhappy with the prospect of reconfiguring their ballot system should the presidential primary ballot envelope secrecy bill pass. They might be heartened, however, with a proposal that would require the state to prepare and distribute the voters pamphlets for primaries in even-numbered years.

That chore – and expense – now falls on counties, even though many of the offices on the ballot are legislators and members of Congress.

The proposal to lower the requirement for passing a school bond issue from the current 60% super majority to a simple majority comes up just about every year, often from lawmakers who have one or more school districts that tried but failed to pass a bond.

The argument to do so, which will almost surely be heard during committee hearings and floor debate, is that in a democracy, the majority should hold sway. We elect city council members and mayors, legislators and governors, U.S. representatives and senators by simple majority, and school bond issues should be no different. (They’ll probably skip over the president and the Electoral College, unless they have a bill to change that, too.)

But there is a difference, which will also almost surely be heard in debate, that bond issues are different because today’s voters are obligating future voters to making payments on that borrowed money for 10 or 20 years.

This requires a state constitutional amendment, and a companion resolution has been filed along with the bill. But the resolution requires a two-thirds super majority in both chambers, which has been an insurmountable obstacle in the past.

More effective than changing the rules of the game might be for legislators to tell the people who are in it, the school officials and bond issue supporters, to mount a better campaign to get those last few percentage points moved from the No column to the Yes column.