GOP chair files lawsuit against consent decree overturning voter residency requirement

(The Center Square) – Washington GOP Chair and State Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, has filed a federal lawsuit alongside Franklin County Auditor Matt Beaton against a consent decree agreed to by the Secretary of State’s Office that overturned a 30-day voter residency requirement in place since the state constitution was ratified in 1889.

Announcing the lawsuit filed in U.S. Federal Court of Western Washington, Walsh wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that to he did so to “reverse a shady scheme to destroy the State Constitution's rule that a person be a WA resident for 30 days before registering to vote. This urgent election integrity issue needs to be fixed now.”

The Center Square first broke news of the consent decree in June, just days before SOS codified the removal of the residency requirement through election rulemaking, though the provision is still found in the state constitution. The lawsuit filed last year by the Washington Alliance for Retired Americans against the residency requirement argued that it violated federal law, in which no residency requirements can be imposed on federal elections.

However, the consent decree agreed to by the State Attorney General’s Office on behalf of SOS made it apply also to state elections. The decree was signed the last day of the legislative session; a provision in the consent decree would have allowed the Legislature to reinstate the residency requirement through lawmaking and have it apply to this November election if done so by Aug. 1.

In their lawsuit, Walsh and Beaton claim that the plaintiffs acted as a “tool for a partisan elections lawyer to roam the country voiding laws he perceives as detriment to the electoral prospects of candidates he favors. And the state defendants were wrong to concede without raising any of the plain challenges.”

It further argues that the plaintiffs “lacks standing, and because the case plainly lacked genuine adversity, this Court did and still does lack Article III jurisdiction over the matter. The Alliance failed to identity any specific current member presently or imminently injured in fact by either the state or precinct aspects of this qualification law.”

The Center Square reached out to the SOS and AGO for comment, but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.