West
Washington legislators push bill making it a felony to threaten election workers
The Washington state Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday to make harassing election workers a felony, three months after four county election offices received envelopes containing suspicious powder — including three testing positive for fentanyl — and had to be evacuated.
“This cannot be something we take as normal,” Democratic Sen. Manka Dhingra said during the vote. “We have to make sure that our election workers are protected, that people who participate and engage in our democracy have faith that the system works well and that we don’t have bad actors that can actually disrupt vote counts.”
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The bill is among a wave of legislation across the U.S. seeking to boost protections for these workers in the lead-up to the 2024 election amid an increasing number of threats some attribute to false claims by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the 2020 election was stolen.
Twenty-three states are considering bills addressing protections, according to the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen. In Maryland, for example, lawmakers are considering legislation to enable authorities to prosecute people who threaten to harm election officials or their immediate family members.
The bill in Washington would increase the possible penalty for harassing an election worker in person or by mail from up to one year in jail to up to five years in prison. It would also give targeted workers the opportunity to join a program run by the secretary of state’s office designed to keep their address confidential.
Erik Thurston prepares ballots from a drop box for the sorting machines on Election Day at the King County Elections headquarters, Nov. 7, 2023, in Renton, Wash. The Washington state Senate has voted Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024 to make harassing election workers a felony. The decision comes three months after several county election offices received envelopes containing suspicious powders and had to be evacuated. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)
The measure has already been approved by the House but will need to go back to that body for verification before heading to Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk. Mike Faulk, spokesperson for the Democratic governor, said in an email that they haven’t reviewed the bill in detail but that Inslee is “generally supportive of efforts to protect our democratic process and the people who carry it out.”
Some Republican lawmakers pushed for the bill to include protections for election observers and people gathering initiative signatures.
“They are physically, I would say, unprotected,” Republican Sen. Keith Wagoner said during a vote on an amendment to protect people collecting signatures. “They’re not inside impressive looking buildings like some of our elected election folks are. They don’t have access to security, but they are vulnerable.”
The amendments were voted down, with Dhingra explaining that individuals collecting signatures are already protected under a harassment statute.
The legislation comes two years after the state made online harassment of an election worker a felony. Democratic Rep. Mari Leavitt, sponsor of the latest bill, said it will better align the punishment for in-person and virtual threats.
“Our election workers are unsung heroes,” she told The Associated Press. “They’re workers of democracy and we need to demonstrate to them that we value them and we want them to show up to work and feel safe, and this is one method to be able to do that.”
In November, four county elections offices in Washington were evacuated the day after election day after receiving envelopes with powder and a message that said, “End elections now.” Three tested positive for fentanyl, according to a spokesperson for the Washington secretary of state.
Linda Farmer, auditor for Pierce County, where one of the elections offices was evacuated, said she remembers over 100 workers being evacuated that morning and hazmat teams along with the FBI and fire department swarming the area, while paramedics made sure the staff member who opened the letter was safe.
“It was terrifying,” she said. “I was nauseous and really scared for the staffer who had opened the letter, but I put on a brave face for the staff.”
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KALISPELL, Mont. — Two app development teams from Code Girls United won the Congressional App Challenge in both Montana districts.
A team with Lily Kirkaldie, Charlie Kotthoff, and Danica Sabo from Great Falls won with their app ‘Cursive Create’.
The app helps teach cursive writing, which the team said is important since cursive is no longer taught in schools.
Three senior students from Browning High School, Aiyahna Green, Kalani Sun Rhodes, and Keesha Guerrero-Gobert, won with their app ‘Sspomo’.
This app provides awareness and resources for people facing mental health challenges, and was inspired by the Blackfeet tribe.
“They were really thoughtful about their community and what was affecting the people that they knew on the reservation, and what they could actually do to help them,” said Code Girls United CEO Marianne Smith.
“What they were seeing in the community was depression and other mental health issues, so they specifically wanted to create an app that would be able to help people that were in that same situation,” said Smith.
Both teams will travel to Washington D.C. for the National Science Fair’s ‘House of Code’, where they will showcase their apps in the U.S. Capitol.
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The event is scheduled for April 21 and 22.
Nevada’s population growth slowed dramatically last year, according to new statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.
New figures from the government agency showed Nevada grew 0.9 percent, which put it in the top 10 states for percentage growth (9th) from July 2024 to July 2025. However, this is down from July 2023 to July 2024 when the state grew by 1.7 percent.
In July 2024, Nevada had 3,253,543 residents, and in July of last year it had 3,282,188. From July 2023 to July 2024, Nevada was the sixth fastest-growing state in the country, which meant it dropped three spots for the time period of July 2024 to July 2025.
Nevada expanded from 3,214,363 residents in July 2023 to 3,267,467 in July 2024, which turned out to be the fastest year-over-year growth rate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, since before the pandemic in 2019. However, all of these growth rates are below the time frame of 2015 to 2018 when the state saw unprecedented population growth.
Overall, U.S. population growth slowed “significantly” from July 2024 to July of last year with an increase of only 1.8 million people, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. This was the lowest population growth for the country since the early days of the pandemic when the population grew only 0.2 percent in 2021 year-over-year.
This population slowdown across the country follows a “sizeable” uptick in the growth rate in 2024 when the U.S. added 3.2 million people and grew 1 percent, the fastest annual population growth rate since all the way back in 2006.
“The slowdown in U.S. population growth is largely due to a historic decline in net international migration, which dropped from 2.7 million to 1.3 million in the period from July 2024 through June 2025,” said Christine Hartley, the assistant division chief for Estimates and Projections at the U.S. Census Bureau. “With births and deaths remaining relatively stable compared to the prior year, the sharp decline in net international migration is the main reason for the slower growth rate we see today.”
The population growth drop was felt across the country as all four census regions (West, Midwest, Northeast and the South) and every state except Montana and West Virginia saw growth slow or a decline in acceleration.
Five U.S. states experienced population decline from July 2024 to July 2025: California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Vermont and West Virginia.
Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pblennerhassett@reviewjournal.com.
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