Washington: State partners with Microsoft and Facebook – voter registration app set to launch soon | electionlineWeekly

Now, in addition to letting all their friends know about what they had for dinner last night, or their political views, what they are listening to on Spotify, or their relationship status, Facebook users in Washington State will soon be able to let all their friends know that they are registered to vote. The Washington Secretary of State’s Office has teamed up with Microsoft and Facebook to offer citizens in Washington a first-in-the-nation opportunity to register to vote via the social networking site. “Our estimate [through Pew’s Electronic Registration Information Center] is that we have potentially two million eligible, but unregistered voters,” said Dave Ammons, spokesman for the secretary of state’s office. “The Facebook app is a marvelous way to prompt people onto our MyVote site for both registration and updates, as well as our voter vault of customized information.” Ammons noted that the state has had online registration since 2008 and that it is quite popular, especially with the Millennials. About a third of the state’s registration traffic is online.

Washington: State to unveil voter registration on Facebook | The Seattle Times

Facebook users in Washington state will have something else to brag about to their online friends: that they registered to vote on Facebook. The secretary of state’s office said Tuesday it will have an application on its Facebook page that allows residents to register to vote and then “like” the application and recommend it to their friends. It’s expected to launch as early as next week. “In this age of social media and more people going online for services, this is a natural way to introduce people to online registration and leverage the power of friends on Facebook to get more people registered,” said Shane Hamlin, co-director of elections. Washington state has had online registration since 2008, and since then, there have been 475,000 registrations or changes of address processed through the system. Washington is one of more than a dozen states that offer online registration. Hamlin said Washington state is the first to offer voter registration via Facebook. “We are excited that citizens in Washington state will be able to register to vote and review useful voting information on Facebook,” said Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes.

Washington: Tab for Inslee special election up in air | HeraldNet.com

State election officials learned Wednesday they won’t be getting an extra $1 million to cover the costs of a special election to replace U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee. Lawmakers did not include any money in the state budget they passed Wednesday before adjourning and heading home. House and Senate budget writers of both parties discussed adding a proviso into the budget to cover some or all of the estimated expenses but couldn’t reach agreement, said Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee. “It was a last-minute thing. It was the last day,” Murray said. “It was a large number and there was no time to scrub it.”

Washington: Obscure laws dictate who picks up tab for special congressional election | Kitsap Sun

Jay Inslee and Sam Reed are both right. A special election to pick a replacement for Inslee in the 1st Congressional District could cost state taxpayers close to $1 million, as Secretary of state Reed says. But the extra election won’t cost that much, as Inslee says. “The overall cost (of the 2012 election) doesn’t change,” Kitsap County Auditor Walt Washington said. Well, it changes a little, he said. Putting another choice on the primary and general election ballots adds maybe $5,000 to each election in Kitsap County. But while the overall bill is pretty much staying the same, the state is required to pick up a little more of the tab because it is a special election.

Washington: Details from political dust-up over “costs” of special election to replace Jay Inslee | News Tribune

Why would it cost $1 million to have a special election to fill the final six weeks of Jay Inslee‘s term in Congress? The answer may be that it doesn’t. But that wasn’t the first question asked today. That designation went to Washington State Republicans who held a press event at the likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee’s Seattle campaign headquarters. In an event titled “Send Inslee the Invoice,” state GOP chairman Kirby Wilbur wants to know why Inslee won’t pay for the election he caused. Wilbur is trying to help the governor campaign of Republican Rob McKenna. Inslee triggered the issue when he resigned his seat in Congress to devote his time to the campaign for governor. The assumption was that the seat would go unfilled for the final eight months of the year and be filled by one of the people running to replace him in Congress. But Inslee resigned late enough so as not to trigger a stand-alone special election for his unexpired term. instead, whichever candidate won the full, two-year term would have taken office early to fill out Inslee’s unexpired term.

Washington: Partisan brawl over cost of special election for Inslee’s former congressional seat | Seattle Times

Republicans continue to pound Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Jay Inslee over the expense of the special election to pick a temporary replacement for the 1st District congressional seat he abandoned last month. State GOP Chairman Kirby Wilbur called a news conference Monday morning in downtown Seattle to demand that Inslee pay for the special election. “He could pay this bill, rather than stick it on taxpayers,” Wilbur said. Secretary of State Sam Reed’s office has estimated the special election could cost the state close to $1 million. But it turns out that figure is misleading. The bulk of that “cost” is merely a budgetary shift to the state from the three counties involved in the special election.

Washington: Special election to replace Inslee for 1 month | Seattle Times

Washington state will hold a special election in November to replace former U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee for just one month – an election expected to be confusing for voters, burdensome for candidates and costly for the state. Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire and Republican Secretary of State Sam Reed said Monday that the state is required under the U.S. Constitution to hold such a vote to fill a vacant seat. Inslee, a Democrat, resigned from his position last month to run for governor. The November election, which will take place on the same ballot as the presidential vote and other state races, is likely to be particularly confusing to voters because Congress is also transitioning to its new district boundaries. The special election will be focused on the old 1st District boundaries that Inslee represented. Voters will also be deciding who will represent the new 1st District.

Washington: Local Washington GOP apologizes for turning 1,500 away from caucuses in Kennewick | Tri-City Herald

About 1,500 people were turned away from pooled Benton County caucuses in Kennewick by event organizers after rooms at the Three Rivers Convention Center reached capacity this morning. Some potential caucus voters said they arrived at 9 a.m. to find the large hallways at the convention center packed to the rafters and were told no more people could enter the caucus rooms. Ray Swenson, a Richland lawyer, criticized local GOP officials for poor organization and said the results today should be invalidated. “I think it’s illegal,” Swenson shouted to a gathered crowd, many of whom were filming him with cell phone cameras. “The Republican party leadership is taking away our freedom.”

California: Appeals court upholds Washington state’s open primary system | latimes.com

In a decision that could foreshadow survival of California’s new “top two” primary system, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a similar Washington state ballot initiative that changed the way voters choose candidates in primaries. Both states’ voters approved measures allowing the top two vote-getters in a primary to advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. The format replaced closed primaries, in which each party chose a candidate for the general election.

Washington: Ninth Circuit Upholds Washington State Top-Two System | Ballot Access News

On January 19, the 9th circuit upheld the Washington state “top-two” system. Here is the decision. The part of the decision about ballot access is very short. It quotes the dicta from the U.S. Supreme Court decision Munro v Socialist Workers Party that says the burden on minor parties is slight as long as their candidates can run in the primary. But it does not mention the holding in Munro v Socialist Workers Party, that there is no constitutional distinction between a petition for ballot access to the November ballot, and a prior vote test.

Washington: Secretary of State Sam Reed asks lawmaker to trim election costs | Kent Reporter

In an effort to save money and make the elections process more efficient during these tight budget times, Secretary of State Sam Reed is asking the Legislature to lower the cost of producing the statewide Voters’ Pamphlet, eliminate the primary for judicial races with fewer than three candidates, and implement other ideas to reduce elections costs for the state and counties.

A second bill in Reed’s modest legislative package aims to reduce the backlog of out-of-state research requests for the State Library’s small research staff. The State Library is a division of the Office of Secretary of State. The third measure in the package would allow participants in the Address Confidentiality Program, which is also run by the agency, to register in a domestic partnership confidentially.

Reed said the centerpiece of his elections cost-savings legislation is allowing the full text of ballot measures to be placed online for free on the Secretary of State’s website instead of the printed Voters’ Pamphlet, which is produced by Reed’s Elections Division. The Secretary of State is required by the Washington Constitution to send the Voters’ Pamphlet to all 3 million Washington households.

Washington: Computer ‘hiccup’ caused late ballots for local voters | The Issaquah Press

King County Elections officials attributed the cause for late ballots to more than 11,000 Eastside voters — including more than 900 in Issaquah and Sammamish — to a computer “hiccup” in the days before the office sent out ballots.

The elections office sent ballots to the impacted voters in late October, about a week after other voters received ballots in the mail. Officials traced the delay to the glitch from late September.

Washington: Ballots’ journey juggles security, transparency | The Issaquah Press

King County Elections places a huge mail order each year. Officials must secure enough ballots for more than 1 million voters spread across a county larger than Rhode Island. Then, the elections office is responsible for ensuring a secure — and hassle-free — process to distribute, authenticate and tally ballots on a strict deadline.

The complicated process starts on a printing press in Everett and ends in a tabulation machine in Renton. The voter is situated in the middle, black ink pen at the ready. The job to print almost 1.1 million ballots is delegated to a commercial printer. The elections office oversees the process as Everett-based K&H Election Services prints and inserts ballots into envelopes. The printer creates ballots for King County and jurisdictions across the United States. Then, ballots stacked on pallets await shipment to voters.

Washington: Port Orchard’s City Council rescinds ‘code city’ resolution to avoid election cost | Port Orchard Independent

Port Orchard’s City Council members faced a decision Tuesday that Councilman Jim Colebank equated with “blackmail” or “coercion.” They could reverse a decision they made for citizens that they believed to be right, or they could incur a cost of up to $30,000 to let the citizens vote on the decision themselves. They voted for the cheaper option, but they weren’t happy about it.

The council wanted to give city government the authority to operate in a less restricted manner, by changing the city’s operating status from “second class” to “code,” and voted to do so in late May after several sparsely attended public hearings on the issue.

But Gil and Kathy Michael, who run the Cedar Cove Inn on Seattle Avenue overlooking the waterfront, collected about 550 signatures to put the issue before citizens in the next election.

Washington: Voting by mail fails to increase turnout in King County | Seattle Times

When King County shifted to an all-mail voting system in 2009, it was supposed to increase voter participation. A progress report published Thursday makes the tentative conclusion that it hasn’t.

“It is interesting to note that voting by mail appears to have made no difference in election turnout,” wrote Mike Alvine, the report’s author and an analyst for the Metropolitan King County Council. Turnout was about the same — about 53 percent — in two comparable general elections, one before and one after the county implemented vote-by-mail.

Voting Blogs: Complying with minority languages requirements | From Our Corner

If you ever wonder why our state or a certain county provides ballots or elections material in some language besides English, it’s because we’re complying with a federal mandate resulting from the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The minority language provisions of the Voting Rights Act were added in 1975. These minority language mandates are found in Section 203 of the VRA.  The way it works is that if at least 10,000 (or over 5 percent) of the voting-age citizens in a voting jurisdiction are members of a single language minority group and are limited-English proficient, that jurisdiction has to provide any registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, ballots and other  elections-related info in that minority language.

Washington: Pierce County Washington’s polls are closed, scanners sent packing – State now all vote-by-mail | The News Tribune

There’ll be no last hurrah for Pierce County’s optical-scanner voting machines. No red-white-and-blue farewell to the last traditional polling places in Washington. No one-last-chance for 85-year-old Erika Cranmer of Lakewood to exercise the democracy she cherishes so by helping conduct an election at her neighborhood polling place; nor for 90-year-old Morry Kenton of Gig Harbor to make…