New Elections Laws Passed in 2025

In 2025, the Washington State Legislature enacted several new laws to update and refine our state’s election systems. These changes address elections integrity, digital security, and how irrigation districts conduct their elections. This blog discusses three of these new laws and provides a recap of a law passed in 2024 that became effective June 1, 2025, and which simplifies how voter registration address changes are handled.

Elections Security: SB 5014

SB 5014 addresses elections security and requires county auditors and elections directors to adopt certain cybersecurity standards by June 1, 2027. These measures include using the ‘.gov’ domain for official election email and elections-related websites, keeping county election networks separate from other county information technology (IT) networks, and adopting new security breach reporting requirements.

The goal is to provide counties with the necessary tools and guidelines to continue to protect sensitive election infrastructure and data consistent with support and oversight from the Washington Secretary of State's office (SOS).

The .gov domain requirement for county elections-related websites is to protect against misinformation and cyberthreats by making it easier for the public to identify legitimate online sources for information related to government. This domain is different than more generic domains such as ‘.com’ or ‘.org’ because the .gov domain is limited to U.S.-based government organizations. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security manages any .gov top-level domain requests, and these domains have built-in oversight features such as fraud prevention controls.

Counties are mandated to keep their elections-related electronic networks separate from their other IT systems. This means physically and/or logically separating election infrastructure and voting systems from other county IT systems.

• Physical separation means keeping voting machines and other election management systems completely isolated from all other networks — particularly the internet — through use of cables, hardware, and physical building spaces.
• Logical separation means systems are partitioned into distinct, isolated networks using software, security protocols, and/or network configurations rather than physical distance or hardware.

Although county auditors and elections directors are already obligated to report elections-related security breaches, SB 5014 places a new breach reporting duty on certain private entities, including manufacturers and distributors of voting systems and other organizations that support voter registration and other elections-related county systems. These entities are now required to report certain security breaches “immediately upon discovery” to the SOS and the Washington State Attorney General’s Office (AGO). This is intended to ensure prompt communication, response, and support when a county may be under a cyberthreat or other elections-related fraud.

Irrigation District Elections: SB 5669

SB 5669 improves election procedures for irrigation districts in our state by changing how they conduct their elections. Irrigation districts follow different election procedures than other taxing districts, due, in part, to the fact that only owners of property within the district are considered “qualified electors.” Irrigation district elections are not overseen or managed by the county auditor's elections office.

Key updates include expanded voting methods, simplified absentee voter requirements, and new security standards. The most significant change is that irrigation districts may now choose to conduct their elections entirely by mail-in ballots. This aligns their separate elections process more closely with Washington's general elections and gives irrigation districts the ability to move away from in-person polling places and provide a more convenient option for qualified electors.

In addition, the new law modifies the previous absentee voting procedures for irrigation districts. Irrigation district voters no longer need to certify that they cannot be present at the polling place on election day in order to vote by mail.

Other specific changes include ballot envelope requirements to protect voter privacy, challenge procedures for ballots, and public transparency requirements for election processes. In addition, this law changes voting eligibility for entities like corporations and for-profit partnerships owning property in irrigation districts, modifies voting allocation rules, and includes penalties for election-related violations, such as interfering with or improperly handling ballots or voting processes. See RCW 87.03.030 through RCW 87.03.075.

County Commissioner Vacancies: SB 5288

SB 5288 repeals two outdated statutes — RCW 36.32.070 and RCW 36.32.0558 — that created a sometimes-conflicting set of rules for filling vacancies on three- and five-member county commissions.

By repealing these statutes, the vacancy process now better aligns with the method provided in the state constitution, including Article II, Section 15. The provision requires that the person appointed by the remaining commissioners “shall be one of three persons who shall be nominated” by the central committee of the same political party as the vacating officer.

 The qualified person appointed to an elected county commissioner position holds office until a successor is officially elected at the next general election. There remains an unresolved question about how to handle vacancies where the vacating officer did not belong to a political party even though they held what is considered a “partisan” office.

Voter Registration Address Changes: HB 1962

Passed in last year’s legislative session, HB 1962 simplifies how address changes for voter registrations are handled when a person moves within the state. Previously, different procedures applied depending on whether the registered voter was moving to a new county or not. If a registered voter moved from one county to another, they were required to cancel their old registration and re-register in their new county leading to the potential inaccuracies on voter rolls.

Eligible voters may use the formerly in-county-only process described above to transfer their voter registration addresses when they move to another county. Additionally, effective June 1, 2025, when a voter changes their residence, whether within the same county or to a different county, their voter registration information is automatically updated as long as the address change is reported to a state agency such as the Department of Licensing, the Department of Social and Health Services, or as designated by the governor. See RCW 29A.08.410.

This means voters no longer need to worry about the complexities of ‘re-registering’ to vote when moving from one county to another. The address change process is simplified, and the state's voter data will remain more current and reliable.

Concluding Thoughts and Resources

These legislative changes, effective in 2025, collectively strengthen Washington State’s electoral process and demonstrate ongoing efforts to adapt to an evolving electoral landscape. A fundamental goal is to help our state’s elections to remain both secure and accessible for all participants.

For more information, here are links to several related resources:

• MRSC
  • New Elections Laws Passed in 2024
  • New Elections Laws Passed in 2023
  • Local Elections Administration
• Washington Secretary of State Elections