Free and fair elections AND faith in our electoral system are key to a healthy democracy; here in Washington State, we enjoy a voting system rated among the top in the country for voting access and ballot security. It’s a system Washington voters embrace: data shows Washington ranked among the top 10 states for voter turnout (1), and a July 2022 statewide poll found 71% of Washington voters have high trust in elections and our state’s vote-by-mail system. (2)

The state’s Republican Party thinks otherwise. In a remarkably tone-deaf move, delegates to the April 2024 Republican State Convention favored more restrictions on voting, including an end to mail-in voting. Instead, Republicans endorsed a system of one-day only in-person elections, requiring photo ID and paper ballots, with no use of tabulating machines or digital scanners to count the ballots. All ballots would be counted by hand. As the Seattle Times noted:“All in all it would make voting less convenient and harder, by rolling it back at least half a century.” (3)

The Republican convention went even further - they specifically rejected democracy:

“THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Washington State Republican Party, in convention assembled, acknowledges that our nation is intended to be a republic, not a democracy” (4)

Last year, a Center for Public Integrity Investigation found twenty-six states — all Republican controlled — made access to voting less equal for people of color, younger voters, immigrants, people with disabilities and others. (5) For example, in states with voter ID laws that require street addresses many indigenous people who live on reservations are cut out, and lack of access to polling places cuts out others. 

By contrast, Democrats are committed to both increasing voter participation and ease of voting - without compromising election integrity. The 2022 Washington Democratic Platform calls for: (6)

• Automatic voter registration for all eligible voters the the first election in which they are eligible to vote;

• Elections in which all votes are cast on carefully monitored, secured human readable paper ballots;

• Mandatory auditing by qualified auditors of the election process and results that are open

  to the public to witness

Many of the disenfranchisement tactics adopted in recent years in other states — from extreme racial gerrymandering to restrictions on voter registration efforts — would have been prevented by the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 prior to major U.S. Supreme Court decisions over the past decade that have gutted most of it. The 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling, for instance, took away the requirement that states and jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination must receive federal approval before changing voter rules.

“There remains a stark divide between states. On one side are those that are broadening democratic participation,” the report from the Brennan Center for Justice notes. “On the other are those making it harder to vote and easier for partisan officials to interfere in democratic processes.”( 7)

Republicans appear to have two views of elections and election results: they tip the scales to win, or if Democrats win, they cheated. Or, as Paul Krugman put it: “[Trump] has mainstreamed the idea that any presidential election won by Democrats is illegitimate.”