Group wants every Washington voter to re-register

By Austin Jenkins
Northwest News Network

A new organization called "Freedom Washington" plans to file an initiative to the people. It would require all voters to re-register.

Backers of the initiative say Washington's voter rolls are in shambles and the only way to clean them up is to start over. If passed, the initiative would deactivate all of the nearly four million voter registrations in the state.

In order to reactivate, voters would have to show proof of citizenship and a photo ID. Bob Williams with the Evergreen Freedom Foundation says his main concern is weeding out illegal immigrants.

"What happened is under the Motor Voter act we gave driver's licenses to illegals. So we believe that there are thousands and thousands of non-United States citizens on our voter rolls. That is wrong," he says.

In order to qualify for the ballot, Freedom Washington would have to collect nearly a quarter million signatures by July. Secretary of State Sam Reed says forcing all voters to re-register violates federal law. His office is currently in the process of scrubbing a new statewide voter database.