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Training Requirement: Washington does not require training for registration drives, but the Office of the Secretary of State provides training and encourages all organizations, employees or volunteers to participate. See the Secretary of State’s guide to voter registration drives: sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/civics/2022_guidetoregister ingvoters.pdf
Notification and Registration Requirements: Washington does not have notification requirements for registration drives.
Compensation Restrictions: Do not pay or reward registration drive participants based on how many registrations they collect. It is a felony in Washington to pay or accept payment for assisting in registering voters where payment is based on a fixed amount of money per voter registration. Do not offer an applicant any incentive of monetary value to register to vote.
State Form: The state form may be obtained from the county auditor or downloaded at the Secretary of State’s website. If you need 250 forms or fewer use this link: sos.wa.gov/elections/register-mail.aspx
For larger bulk orders, voter registration organizations should contact the Secretary of State’s office for delivery. Up to 1,000 can be requested for a voter registration drive.
Voter registration forms are also available in Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Cambodia, Korean, Laotian, and Russian and more at sos.wa.gov/elections/ Print-VoterRegistration-Forms.aspx.
Federal Form: The federal mail-in voter registration application may be used in voter registration drives: eac.gov/voters/national-mail-voter-registration-form/
Registration event promo materials: Buttons and posters are available here: sos.wa.gov/elections/civics/requestvoter-registration-event-materials/
Incomplete Applications: Do not fill in any missing information on a registration form unless you have permission from the applicant.
Photocopying Completed Applications: There is no law or rule prohibiting photocopying or retaining information from completed registration applications. As a best practice, a voter’s full or partial Social Security number and/or driver’s license number should not be retained.
Submitting Completed Applications: Registration applications collected as part of a voter registration drive must be returned no later than 5 days after receiving them, or before the voter registration deadline, whichever is first. Fair Elections Center recommends that drives submit applications so that they are received by county election offices by this timeframe.
Voter registration applications should be delivered/ mailed to the county election office of the county where the voter resides: sos.wa.gov/elections/auditors.aspx
A person or organization collecting voter registration forms that intentionally does not transmit the forms to an election office may be prosecuted.
If you have forms from multiple counties you should mail them to the Secretary of State and they will forward them. Forms can be mailed/delivered to the Secretary of State’s Office, Election Division: 520 Union Ave. SE; PO Box 40229; Olympia, WA 98504-0229.
For more information, visit
www.fairelectionscenter.org
