WAGOP Joins Regional Movement to END Vote-By-Mail

Bellevue - The Washington State Republican Party (WAGOP), led by Chairman Jim Walsh, has officially joined the effort to reform elections in Washington state with Initiative Measure No. IL26-126, a citizen-led effort that would require Voter ID and Proof of Citizenship to vote.

The #ENDVBM movement that started in Oregon is a regional effort advocating one day, in-person voting with voter identification, hand-counted ballots, clean databases, and designating election day as a national holiday. The aim is to restore trust and transparency in the election process where one-party rule has failed to adequately manage voter databases and other questionable practices.

“Nobody takes responsibility for making sure that registered voters are actual citizens and otherwise legal voters,” says Chairman Walsh. “You press the Department of Licensing, and you press the Secretary of State, and they end up pointing fingers at each other.”

“Our long-term goal is to get where ENDVBM is going,” adds Chairman Walsh, who also serves as state representative for southwest Washington. “We want to get back to in-person voting. We want to get back to same day vote count.”

The regional #ENDVBM effort aligns with the Trump Administration’s executive order Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.

While the WAGOP has been fighting hard for election integrity in state courts, Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown is dismissing election integrity entirely. “We are not going to take advice on election integrity from a guy who can’t stop lying about his 2020 election loss,” he tweeted recently. “We have a secure and fair election system that respects voters’ rights, and we will use every tool we have to protect that.”

Hardly. “Washingtonians of all political stripes have been asking the WAGOP to do something about election integrity in our state,” says Chairman Walsh. “For the past 18 months, WAGOP has been developing and implementing a strategy to take effective action. We studied the state’s election system to find the most vulnerable parts. Then, we filed lawsuits and drafted legislation. From there, we’ve redrafted the latest citizen-led initiative.

In the meantime, The Republican National Committee (RNC) has also called upon 48 secretaries of state, including the WA Office of the Secretary of State, to provide detailed methodology on how each state maintains its voter data bases. Initiative IL26-126, when implemented as law, will help move that good reform process forward.