Election reform on the go: State builds voter database

OLYMPIA -- While legislators slog through more than a dozen election-reform bills, the Secretary of State's Office is quietly putting together a statewide voter database that backers call the year's best single upgrade.

And it won't cost a dime of state tax money.

The federally financed $6 million database is being put together at the behest of Congress and follows the Florida presidential-voting fiasco of 2000 and Washington state's flawed gubernatorial election of 2004.

The first-ever computerized state voter database will replace 39 separate county lists, some meticulously kept on file cards.

Once it comes on line in January, it will enable election officials to make sure that felons, dead people and non-citizens aren't allowed to vote and that people aren't registered in more than one locale or voting more than once per election.

Secretary of State Sam Reed and state and local election officials are optimistic that the move will purge and protect the voting lists and guard against illegal votes.

Republican Dino Rossi is contesting Gov. Christine Gregoire's narrow election based on allegations that votes by illegal voters were included and that hundreds of provisional ballots were tallied without proper verification. A trial begins in Wenatchee on May 23.

Election officials say the database will help restore the bruised public confidence in the election system but surely won't be a cure-all.

"We're not overselling it -- it won't be perfection," Steve Excell, assistant secretary of state. "Databases aren't perfect, never are. But anything that's progress, we'll take."

The goal, of course, is a clean list of voters so that ballots are sent only to valid voters and so that only properly cast ballots are counted. The list will be used to check initiative petition signatures, to prepare poll books for county election offices and poll sites, and to prepare vote-by-mail ballot lists.

Four computer whizzes, with consulting help from Microsoft, are hard at work on the project, using space in the State Library south of town.

Nick Handy, the state election director, said the database, now more than two years in the works, will result in the purging of a sizable number of names at first, such as felons.

Questioned ballots, spotlighted in the continuing court battle over the nip-and-tuck governor's election, probably total about 2,000 or so, out of 3.5 million registered voters, Excell said. But getting closer to perfection is an important goal and will help restore public trust, he said.

Even though it's a state takeover of a function previously left to the counties, local auditors are enthused about the database.

"It's a huge deal," said veteran Snohomish County Auditor Bob Terwilliger. "This will make the voter rolls a whole lot more accurate. This won't be foolproof. There will always be glitches. But we will certainly be a lot closer to getting it right."

But Pam Floyd, Reed's director of voter registration services, says the fanciest system in the world can't remove human error from the equation, especially when dealing with data from huge bureaucracies such as the Social Security Administration and the state Licensing and Corrections departments.

Dean Logan, the embattled King County elections chief, calls the database "a key element of election reform, a key and crucial step, although not a panacea."

Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy said she's cautiously optimistic that computerized, real-time updates will be a quantum leap in election administration, but she warns it won't solve every problem.

"I'd hate for the public to think this is the end-all and be-all of all the issues we face," McCarthy said. "I'm not being negative, I just don't want people to say, 'You promised us the world.' "

WHAT WILL BE STORED

The computerized state voter database is expected to include:

The counties' most recent voter registration lists. The computerized cross-checking can track a voter who moves, say from Bremerton to Wenatchee, so that the voter doesn't get more than one ballot.

Social Security and Department of Health updates on deaths. The former could help spot a Clark County voter who dies in a Portland hospital. The latter is a good way to track death notices that are sent to state and local vital statistics bureaus.

Lists of felons from the Department of Corrections and State Patrol, backed up by updates from county courts whenever voting rights are restored after the ex-convict serves the sentence and pays court costs and court-ordered restitution.

Driver's license data. This could help the system match birth dates and addresses to voters, as with two John Smiths in Olympia, one of whom may be an illegal voter.

Illegal aliens. Secretary of State Sam Reed is trying to access a federal database of non-citizens, both legal immigrants and illegal aliens. Only citizens who are properly registered may vote.

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