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Between 2004 and 2010 in Washington, there were seven documented cases of vote-by-mail fraud, according to a Brookings Institution review of voter-fraud data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, which the Washington AGO cited in a lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service—more on that in a bit. Most attempted cases of fraud were identified and stopped, Hunt said, such as a person who unsuccessfully registered their dog to vote. Additionally, “We regularly run the death rolls past the voter registration rolls to make sure we eliminate that.”
Hunt credits the relatively clean record to Washington’s statewide voter database, which compares a voter’s signature against others on file, such as a driver’s license: “It made us develop a statewide voter registration database, became very sophisticated in using the signatures.”
In fact, when Washington shifted to mail-in voting, a familiar name who was then-King County Councilmember Bob Ferguson told the Seattle Times, “‘My view was, we should do one system and do it well, extremely well,’ he said. ‘I’m not suggesting that voting by mail was a cure-all, but it was certainly a key element in a series of reforms that have turned around the department.’”'''
Fast forward to this year, now Attorney General Ferguson is leading a coalition of 14 states, including Washington, in a lawsuit against the White House and USPS over changes at the Postal Service that allegedly hamper states’ “sovereign powers to conduct elections by mail, in whole or in part, during the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington.
On Sept. 17, Washington Eastern District Court Judge Stanley A. Bastian granted Ferguson’s office’s requested order for preliminary injunction for the USPS “to immediately halt drastic operational changes,” according to an AGO press release.
The order prohibits the USPS from implementing or enforcing policy changes announced in July 2020 “that have slowed mail delivery,” deviating from the office’s policy of treating election mail as first class postage, removing or decommissioning mail-sorting machines, reducing post office hours, or closing mail-processing facilities; and making any “change in the nature of postal services which will generally affect service on a nationwide or substantially nationwide basis.”
The injunction will remain in effect until a final judgment is entered or until further order of the court.
https://nwsidebar.wsba.org/2020/09/28/a-brief-legal-history-of-washingtons-vote-by-mail-system/