Legislature attacks Pierce County polling places
Posted by Trent England - January 18, 2008The drive to force all Washington state voters to vote by mail hit a snag when the Pierce County Council decided last year to retain in-person voting at polling places. King County intends to switch to all vote-by-mail, but may delay the change into 2009 or beyond.
Vote-by-mail totalitarians have decided enough is enough. Yesterday, Representative Sam Hunt (D-Olympia) introduced House Bill 2833, which would ban precinct poll voting in Washington state.
Pierce County has struggled with the vote-by mail question for years (EFF covered it here, here, and here; The News Tribune here, here, and here). Secretary of State Sam Reed even weighed in, lobbying polling place proponents on the County Council. (More LibertyLive coverage of elections, including King County’s woes, is here.)
Representative Hunt chairs the House Committee on State Government & Tribal Affairs, where a hearing on the bill is scheduled for January 23. The other three sponsors of HB 2833 hail from Thurston, King, and Kitsap Counties.
The legislation also contains an emergency clause for only Pierce County, forcing them to adopt all mail voting this year. King County gets until 2009; they, apparently, do not have an emergency north of the county line.
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