EFF goes to court over registration of 17-year-olds to vote

• Published October 08, 2008

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The conservative Evergreen Freedom Foundation is taking Washington elections officials to court to block their practice of letting teens younger than 18 be registered to vote. It's the latest fallout from the state's error-plagued 2004 election.

State elections director Nick Handy insists no underage voters voted in the Aug. 19 primary. But under a longstanding practice, 17-year-olds are allowed to fill out and send in signed registration forms if they turn 18 before the next election. They are not supposed to receive ballots or go onto active voter lists.

EFF researcher Bob Edelman looked back at voter records since January 2000, finding 108 underage teenagers actually voted in Washington elections. He counted 127 unlawful ballots in that period, including four teens that voted as recently as the February presidential primary. See story here.

An administrative hearings judge already heard and dismissed EFF’s complaint in August, deciding that Secretary of State Sam Reed’s handling of voter registrations did not violate the federal Help America Vote Act, or HAVA. Handy backed up that ruling after a formal administrative review completed Sept. 12.

In her administrative law ruling, judge Rebekah R. Ross determined that “HAVA requires only that the Secretary of State make a reasonable effort to remove registrants who are ineligible to vote. It does not discuss steps to prevent erroneous registration of underage voters” with exceptions, her ruling said. See story here.

The EFF suit was filed in Thurston County Superior Court, asking for a judge to review Handy’s decision, according to EFF legal counsel Jonathan Bechtle. He said this in a formal statement:

Edelman found there were 16,000 underage voter registrations in the system during the 2000-08 period. Elections officials said in June there were just 31 pending registrations ahead of the Aug. 19 primary.

Handy said this: