What if all your polling places are destroyed? New Idaho law says, ‘Too bad’
One of the more disturbing stories to come out of this year’s still-developing wildfire season was the near-total destruction of the small farming town of Malden in eastern Washington state on Monday.
Almost every structure in Malden, population 200, was destroyed by a fast-moving wildfire as high winds created what officials described as a firestorm, according to NPR.
The Whitman County Sheriff’s Office reported that 80% of the town’s structures were destroyed. Malden, just 25 miles from the Idaho state line, lost its fire station, post office, City Hall, library and most of its homes, the sheriff said.
When I saw that story, I thought about a new election law that the Idaho Legislature passed in last month’s special session.
You may recall that the Legislature passed a bill mandating that Idaho always provide an in-person voting option. There’s little question that it was passed in response to what happened during the May primary in Idaho, in which Gov. Brad Little included all-mail voting as part of his emergency orders during the coronavirus pandemic.
There was no in-person voting in May, and many legislators bristled that the governor, with the stroke of a pen, was able to completely wipe out in-person voting.
So during the session, legislators nearly unanimously passed a bill requiring in-person voting.
Only Democratic Sens. Cherie Buckner-Webb and Maryanne Jordan voted against it. The vote was unanimous in the House.
The governor signed it into law on Sept. 1.
“Every elector shall always be provided the opportunity to vote in person in an election, notwithstanding any declaration of emergency, extreme emergency, or disaster emergency by the governor,” according to the language that was added into Idaho Code.
On its face, it seems pretty straightforward, and the message pretty clear: Even if the governor declares an emergency, every voter shall be provided an opportunity to vote in person.
But here’s the problem: What if you have an “extreme emergency” that wipes out every place you have to hold an election, such as your library, your city hall and your fire station?
That’s what happened in Malden. Fortunately, Washington has all-mail-in voting, so the good residents of Malden don’t have to worry about not having a polling place.
Idaho is in its own wildfire season, and Malden is so close to Idaho, it’s possible you could have a similar scenario in Idaho.
If White Bird is completely on fire, where would the polling place be? If you want to think of another natural disaster, many Idahoans recall the Teton Dam’s catastrophic failure in 1976.
“What if Lucky Peak (dam) failed?” Sen. Maryanne Jordan told me in a phone interview Tuesday. “That was one of the first thoughts I had (during the special session debate on the bill). What if Lucky Peak failed? If you’ve ever looked at those flood maps, it will wake you up in the middle of the night.”
If Lucky Peak Dam were to break on, say, Nov. 2, would Ada County Clerk Phil McGrane need to have a party barge at the ready as a mobile voting unit?
“To prescribe that people have to have a vote-in-person option after a devastating emergency, regardless of what the emergency is, seems to go beyond perhaps what the intent of the legislation might have been,” Jordan said. “I just thought it was too much.”
Legislators were making a statement, trying to prevent the governor from instituting all-mail voting through an emergency declaration, but in passing this legislation, they swung the pendulum a little too far.
