BILL REQ. #:  S-1076.1 

Read first time 02/07/13.   Referred to Committee on Governmental Operations.

     AN ACT Relating to protecting personal voter signatures; and adding a new section to chapter 29A.72 RCW.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

NEW SECTION.  Sec. 1   A new section is added to chapter 29A.72 RCW to read as follows:
     In order to avoid public access to the personal voter signatures of those who sign petitions, when petitions are submitted to the secretary of state for verification, the secretary of state shall produce two scanned copies: One that contains all the information on the petitions and that can only be viewed by the secretary of state's team during the verification process and one for public access that includes only the front of the petitions containing the signers' names and addresses with the voters' personal signatures blacked out. Unless ordered by a court, the secretary of state shall not permit copies to be made of or allow public access to the verification version of the petitions. Nothing in this section prohibits a court from reviewing any petition or petitions in a legal challenge; any petition or petitions reviewed by the court must remain under seal and be subject to a protective order. The legislature finds that the secretary of state's policy of not allowing the personal voter signatures on the voter rolls and individual ballots to be made public should be extended to the personal voter signatures on petitions. The legislature cannot find a good public policy rationale for allowing hundreds of thousands of personal voter signatures to be publicly available.