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Western Washington County Plans Lawsuit Over Ballot Box Costs

Spokane County

This year the Washington legislature approved a bill that requires counties to place more ballot drop boxes in rural areas, but it didn’t allocate money to cover their costs.

Now a western Washington county is getting ready to take the state to court to require it to pay the expenses of complying with the new state mandate.

The Everett Herald reports Snohomish County expects to spend $250,000 next year to install and operate 19 new ballot boxes. The new state law requires at least one drop box for every 15,000 registered voters and at least one box in each city, town, and census-designated area with a post office.

The irony is the bill was sponsored by Snohomish County Sen. Kirk Pearson, who has since left the legislature to take a job with the Trump administration. Pearson argued more boxes are needed because asking voters to buy stamps to mail in their ballots is like imposing a poll tax.

Pearson’s bill sailed through the Senate on a unanimous vote. But word about the bill began to spread and when the House considered the bill, county officials were ready. At a committee hearing, elections officials made the case that this was something they couldn’t afford without help from the state. Whitman County Republican Commissioner Art Swannack said ballot boxes are expensive to buy, install and then staff on election night.

“We would need 28 additional people to go out in pairs to close down these ballot boxes at the eight o-clock closing time of elections. That is a huge staffing issue, temporary staffing issue, but they have to be qualified, they have to be trained, to go out there and put the locks on, make sure everything works right," Swannack said. "We don’t believe it’s warranted because, honestly, everybody can mail their ballot in in our county.”

The House approved the bill by a narrow margin and Governor Jay Inslee signed it into law.

In April, Spokane County Democratic Auditor Vicky Dalton told Spokane Public Radio she’s upset that the bill takes away her discretion to deploy limited resources.

“So now I’m going to have to put boxes in areas where they’re not going to get much use. And because of that, I’m probably not going to have the money or the capacity of people and budget to be able to put boxes, in the next five years, where the growth is happening," Dalton said. "So, this will help a handful of voters and it will hurt a far greater number of voters.”

Thanks to TVW for some of the sound in this story.

I’m Doug Nadvornick reporting.

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