Researchers: Underage teens voted in primary

By Brad Shannon | The Olympian • Published June 14, 2008

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OLYMPIA – A conservative Olympia think tank researching illegal voting in Washington says four teenagers younger than 18 — including one in Thurston County — voted improperly in the Feb. 19 presidential primary.

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation filed a complaint with Secretary of State Sam Reed over the findings Friday, alleging violations of the federal Help America Vote Act.

An EFF researcher says 108 underage teenagers have voted since January 2000 in Washington elections, casting 127 unlawful ballots. The foundation asked Reed to stop allowing underage voters to register, a practice that has been allowed for years by law.

"The secretary of state must act quickly to prevent any additional underage registrations from being accepted before the fall elections, either with a fix to the state database, new procedures for county election offices, or both," EFF legal counsel Jonathan Bechtle said in a statement.

Reed's office issued a statement late in the day from state elections director Nick Handy that staff members had been working on the issue for months. The agency has 30 days to respond to the EFF complaint, and Handy said procedures are in place to ensure that underage voters do not cast ballots in the Aug. 19 primary.

"We are very aware of the situation, and we have a team working to develop tougher safeguards against underage voting," Handy said.

Handy did not spell out how the underage voters in King, Stevens, Thurston and Whitman counties got by inspectors in the presidential primary. But Thurston County Auditor Kim Wyman had a theory for how it happened.

Wyman said underage voters can register legally once they turn 171/2, allowing them to be prepared for the next election.

"This has been standard practice for a long as I've been doing elections," she said.

But Wyman said she thinks the problem arose with the state-run voter database, which local elections agencies rely on to build lists of eligible voters. It inadvertently converted three Thurston County teens' registrations from pending to active status.