WashingtonCAN

Voter Rights for ALL

In 2006, Washington CAN! was a lead plaintiff in a major legal victory (PDF) to protect the right to vote. New voter “matching” requirements threatened to disenfranchise thousands of voters whose information did not match records held in state computerized databases. Large databases are often fraught with errors. Moreover, matching procedures may disproportionately impact certain racial and ethnic groups. For example, modified spellings of traditional names, as are common in some communities, are often misregistered by data entry staff. The use of both maternal and paternal last names, as is common for some people in the Latino community, can also pose data matching problems because under the new law, if an individual uses a different version of her name on her application than is used in the database, she will not be registered to vote.

The legal decision in Washington’s voter registration “matching” case will protect voters’ right to cast their ballot whether their registration information "matches" or not. Now, the only consequence of not matching is that at some point before the election returns are certified, an unmatched voter will have to show a copy of some form of identification, including a utility bill or paycheck. For counties with in-person voting, the unmatched voter can show the ID at the polls.

In 2004, WashingtonCAN organized a massive voter registration/outreach drive during which, we interacted with an alarming number of people of color who weren’t even eligible to register due to their former felony convictions. More alarming, a large portion of those whose voting rights had been revoked didn’t know what steps to take in order to restore those rights. The shear number of people affected by legal limitations to voter registration prompted Washington Community Action Network to get involved. After researching the process by which voting rights can be restored we knew that the process was flawed, complicated and impossible to decode. It requires that individuals pay ALL their legal fees and jump through a litany of bureaucratic red tape in order to regain their right to vote and too often our public and elected officials can’t decipher these laws.

A solution was introduced this past legislative session; House Bill 2062. The bill include a system to track voter registration of individuals with former felony convictions, it would simplify the law, and improve the accuracy and the manageability of voter lists. House Bill 2062 would ease the felon voting rule-automatically restoring their right to vote once their prison/jail terms are completed and they’re no longer in custody or on probation.

House Bill 2062 gained a lot of support but in the end there wasn’t enough time to push it through the legislature. Washington Community Action Network believes that former felons should not have to pay financial restitution BEFORE their voting rights are restored. We are committed to this issue and will be involved as it develops over the next months. The ACLU is currently taking a lead role to make sure that voter discrimination in Washington is a priority during the 2006 Legislative session. To find out more about this national campaign, what’s new, latest press releases and articles please visit the ACLU website.

If you’d like to get more involved on a local level, have a personal story to share or simply want to know more about this topic, please contact Joshua@washingtoncan.org.

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