League takes deep dive on election reform | News, Sports, Jobs

One would be hard pressed to find an issue that has inflamed passions more in the last 18 months than voting regulations.

But those laws and processes are at the heart of an extensive research study that has been undertaken by the League of Women Voters of Warren County.

The League is targeting a fall/winter release to the public as efforts currently focus on refining positions on issues including voter registration, voter ID, early and mail-in voting and the use of drop boxes.

“Our mission is to help the public to become educated to vote,” Phyllis Wright said. “We thought this is one of the things we have to do.”

The research commenced in January, and many of the League’s members have been involved in the effort.

These kinds of studies are not unique to the Warren County League. The group once studied fracking while others have explored criminal justice reform, prison reform, and health care issues.

“(We) picked voter rights because there is so much out there right now,” Sally Beckerink said.

And timing also played a role in it.

“(We) had just come off an election,” Beckerink said, with a “very important one coming up. The timing is good.”

They hope to have elements of the study ready for public consumption in advance of the fall election.

While it’s a working document, a series of consensus statements would support current voter registration policies and call for automatic voter registration; support no-excuse mail-in voting and early voting “as useful tools for guaranteeing a citizen’s right to vote and “recommends the use of drop boxes” for those ballots

There isn’t yet such a concise statement on voter ID, but county League President Susan Swab said there is a “very low percentage of impersonation by ID. The facts don’t show that that’s a problem.”

Wright pointed out challenges that some have in getting ID here given the limited hours of the driver’s license center.

Beckerink stressed that “our whole goal” was to ensure elections are fair, accessible and secure. “We want everyone to be able to vote.”

The recommendations are responses to partisan political issues but that’s not at the heart of the League’s effort.

“We always stress we’re non-partisan,” Swab said. “That’s probably our biggest point that we always have to make.”

Wright said the League strives to bring “the issues and facts” forward “as we best (can).”

“If you look at some of the resources in here, none are as negative as we thought they would be,” she said. “As we studied this, most of it truly was written to benefit the citizens. It was information to benefit this mission.”

“I think if you look at the sources, we tried to avoid opinions and stick to statistics,” Beckerink said. “We really tried to make it non-partisan.”

One such example, Wright explained, is the use of drop boxes in other states “for years” without “any problem.

She acknowledged the League couldn’t explore all of the issues relative to voting laws. “(We) thought these were the most important to get individuals to vote,” she said.