Mashup: House Republicans oppose Dem bill that could eliminate voting opportunities in Washington

last year we had a discussion about advisory votes and there was a lot of discussion about how advisory votes make ballots longer and lead to voter fatigue and yet here we are considering a policy that could lead and will likely lead to much longer ballots by eliminating that off-ear election in my view that is the exact wrong way to go about the intended outcome of this policy which is increasing voter participation Madam speaker we all want that everyone wants that there's no objection to increasing voter participation but doing so without the infrastructure in place without the resources without the skilled technicians who we rely upon to make sure our votes are counted accurately we need to be listening to those people we should be listening to our experts we talk about that often and our County Auditors as well as our secretary of state have looked into this and they've seen the results they've provided research and data that shows that while this is a laudable gold to increase turnout in those local races we often find the exact opposite happens so while yes in even year elections you may have increased voter turnout you're also likely to see larger falloff that means somebody may come and vote for the president uh Statewide electeds hopefully some of us uh but then they may say I'm done this ballot is crowded this is what the problem is with adding everybody all onto a single ballot that's what it is it's not that somebody forgets to vote it's just there's too much on there for them to keep track of everything and understand who all the candidates and issues are in order to make a well-informed vote so they stop voting at some point that doesn't increase participation it lowers it we want more voter in participation we do want more people to be able to participate in our elections I don't think removing a year's election helps PE people to participate I think if there was amendments adopted I could have got to yes today uh I trust our Secretary of State I trust our Auditors to do uh the good work that they do I appreciate the hard work that they do and uh I'm going to stand with our Auditors and our secretary of state today and urge a no vote our Auditors are virtually unanimous in their opposition to this bill we have heard loud and clear from if you could speak to the policy please proceed but I was Madam speaker but I'll I'll refrain we have heard from any number of folks rural counties very concerned about job loss about the ability to R to retain and keep well-trained election staff in their offices my small County Auditors have asked do not support this we can't keep our election workers who are trained that have institutional knowledge I don't think for trust in our elections this is the right way to go the most distrusted level of government is the most distant the most trusted is the most local and for our voters who are looking to make a decision in their elections to have their local elections drowned out by the national news and the federal federalization of our issues is unfair to them please vote no