I don't want the burden of helping our election officials nab illegal voters any more than I want to help the police arrest rapists and robbers. But if our election officials punt their duties back to the public, at least they should share the information we need to finger the naughty voters. Unfortunately, the officials also insist on withholding some of the most critical info--even to the point of setting dangerous precedents that weaken the Public Disclosure Act.
Last week I sued Secretary of State Sam Reed to obtain some key data. I lost the case in what was a blow to both clean elections and open government.
Ineligible votes pose a real threat to the integrity of our elections. Here in King County, more than 10,000 people cast absentee ballots in November from mailing addresses outside the State of Washington. Many are not absentee locals, but people that live elsewhere and assert fake residences in income tax-free Washington State. We should all be concerned that Atlanta residents may determine whether Seattle passes a school levy.
Detecting fraudulent voters requires good information. Voter names and addresses are readily available as public records, but voter birth dates are not, even though they can be essential for verifying duplicate, dead, felon, and nonresident voters.
When I wrote to Secretary Reed in January asking for a list of voter birth dates he denied my request. Washington's Public Disclosure Act states that the act, "shall be liberally construed and its exemptions narrowly construed," meaning the government can legally refuse a request for information only if there is a law that specifically exempts the requested information from the public. However, my attorney advised me there is no explicit statute prohibiting the secretary of state from disclosing voter birth dates, so I sued the secretary of state to compel disclosure.
Judge Richard Hicks heard my case in Thurston County last week. Hicks denied my motion on the grounds that the elections code implicitly, and somewhat vaguely, prohibits the release of birth dates. Despite the blow, I left the courtroom heartened. In his ruling the judge hinted that I was onto something, voicing his dismay at the "mushrooming of exemptions" to public disclosure. And then he acknowledged that this would be a good case for appeal (he said he felt this was too big of an issue to be decided at the superior court level). The "clear collision" between the elections law and the Public Disclosure Act, he said, should be put on the table for public discussion.
My lawyer and I agree: We need to have that discussion--both to defend the value of our votes and to plug the latest leak in the Public Disclosure Act.
