Judge tosses complaint about underage voters

By Brad Shannon | The Olympian • Published August 22, 2008

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A state hearing judge has thrown out a legal complaint over state election practices that allowed four 17-year-olds to vote in the February presidential primary.

The ruling, announced Thursday by Olympia-based think tank Evergreen Freedom Foundation, found that Secretary of State Sam Reed's handling of voter registrations did not violate the federal Help America Vote Act.

State administrative law 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 says.

Evergreen Freedom filed the complaint and plans to appeal.

"The judge seemed to ignore the plain evidence we provided and just accept Reed's arguments, even if he hadn't provided any documentation to back up his assertions," EFF attorney Jonathan Bechtle said in an e-mail. "The fact of the matter is that these registrations are continuing to come in, and Reed's staff has shown an inability to intercept them in a timely fashion to prevent illegal voting."

The question of ineligible voters rose after the 2004 election, when Republican Dino Rossi tried to use evidence of votes by felons and from deceased voters as grounds to overturn Chris Gregoire's election as governor. State lawmakers later approved reforms, including creation of a statewide voter database that compares registration lists to lists of felons and death reports to weed out ineligible voters' names.

But EFF researcher Bob Edelman said he looked back at voter records since January 2000 and found that 108 underage people voted in Washington elections, casting 127 unlawful ballots. That included four teens who voted in the February presidential primary.

Edelman said he also found that there were 16,000 underage-voter registrations in the system from 2000 to 2008, although state officials said in June that there were 31 pending registrations ahead of the Aug. 19 primary.

The foundation asked Reed to stop allowing underage voters to register, a practice that has been allowed for years by law.

There is no evidence yet of underage voters casting ballots in the primary, but Bechtle said his group would examine the vote later to see for itself.

Shane Hamlin, an assistant state director of elections, defended his agency's handling of the registrations, which are based on a long practice of allowing 17-year-olds to register if they will be 18 before the following election.

"The process and procedures we have now generally work," Hamlin said, noting there were no underage voters casting ballots in the November 2007 election. "We need to continue to do what we're doing now and remain vigilant."

EFF expects to appeal the ruling to a higher level of administrative hearings review that would consider more evidence, Bechtle said. Beyond that, the think tank could consider an appeal to Superior Court.