Olympia – The Ways and Means Committee in the legislature will discuss what it would cost if Senate Bill 5597 were implemented into legislation. The committee will meet February 5. Senate Bill 5597 would add onto the Washington Voting Rights Act that was passed in 2018.
The Washington Voting Rights Act makes it illegal for local governments to have discriminatory election practices. A government is in violation if they show racially polarized voting or members of a protected class don’t have the equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
The Political Director for the advocacy group OneAmerica, Melissa Rubio, said while the Voting Rights Act is strong, it needs strengthening.
OneAmerica advocates for immigrants and refugees in Washington State.
“As [we’ve] taken this legislation and used it we noticed we had to make a couple of tweaks and changes,” Rubio said. “Like any piece of legislation the first time, you may not get it completely right.”
Rubio said they have urgency to get this bill passed now because we’re in a redistricting year.
Senate Bill 5597 would change the Voting Rights Act in two key ways.
First, it would require a superior court or the attorney general’s office to clear any changes to election practices that local governments make to ensure the practice doesn’t violate the act.
Second, it would require the University of Washington to collect data on voting practices for at least the previous 12 year period. They would use the data to investigate whether current election practices are in violation of the Voting Rights Act and how diluting protected classes votes can be avoided.
They would also make a ballot rejection list with the reasons for ballot rejection.
Sharlett Mena testified in favor of the bill and shared her experience growing up in Pasco and never seeing candidates from her community run for office.
“It’s not about the right to vote, but it’s about the right to have your vote matter,” Mena said. “I think that is so significant for those of us who grew up in eastern or central Washington in Latino communities and have seen a lack of that.”
Pasco and Yakima County both have a history of being accused of discriminatory election practices. Yakima County settled a lawsuit this summer with OneAmerica which accused them of diluting the Latino vote.
The lawsuit changed the way the county votes so instead of the entire county voting for candidates, we now vote for candidates in our district.
It also made Yakima County changed the layout of districts to include a majority Latino district.
The Yakima County Community Organizer for OneAmerica Audel Ramirez said he was satisfied with the outcome of the settlement.
“Most of the cities in the lower valley were actually divided in half between two districts,” Ramirez said. “It’s something called cracking and that was done intentionally in order to dilute the Latino vote. That coupled with the at large voting system kind of guaranteed that even if every Latino in the county voted for a candidate, they could not outvote the majority white population in Yakima County. So, more than happy, it’s refreshing that people will have the ability to choose their representative.”
Commissioner for the now Latino majority District 3 LaDon Linde said he was also satisficed with the outcome.
“The one thing with the settlement we wanted to avoid was the ranked choice voting, we feel that the fairest ways to count votes is that everyone has one vote,” Linde said. “We feel that’s as equal and as fair as you can get so we were glad to get that out of the settlement as far as the rest, we can live comfortably with the rest.”
The new districts were approved by a judge at the end of last year.
All three commissioner positions are up for reelection this year. Linde said he feels he still has a pretty good chance of winning because he listens to his constituents.
While this settlement was a step forward, Mena says there is still work to do to guarantee people have fair voting rights.
“I want to see changes in every community where there are Latinos or other minority groups or other language groups that deserve representation in local government.”
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