Council To See New Voting Legislation Tuesday

Photo by ericschoon.

These optimistic words belong to Ward 3 Councilwoman Mary Cheh, whose review of last November's elections will conclude with the introduction of new legislation to the Council on Tuesday. The numerous issues with those elections have been well-documented: between thousands of phantom ballots, long lines at early voting booths, and incorrect ballots sent to absentee voters, if you didn't have some sort of issue in registering your mark, then count yourself lucky.

So what's in the new legislation? Well, there's the headline-grabbers: such as granting the ability to vote in primaries to 17-year-olds, as long as they turn 18 by the general election date. Additionally, the bill would institute a "no fault" absentee voting policy -- meaning no more struggling to come up with an excuse if you don't want to trek out to your polling station on Election Day. Cheh also wants to see the District return to a paper-based system to verify results.

But the controversial section of the proposed new laws is the installation of same-day registration. Under the current rules, a new voter needs to register at least 30 days in advance of an election to participate -- Cheh's legislation would remove that restriction, allowing any able individual to register and vote at any time after ballots are finalized. The real question -- will the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics have the resources to handle the operation? $330,000 is set aside in the fiscal 2010 budget to help pay for the changes, so the money is there, and ideally, the larger availability of early voting will spread the crowds out a bit. But it could become a very big problem if, say, an error in registration causes any sort of duplicative voting.

If passed, the measures would go into effect in time for the 2010 mayoral and council elections.