KOMO-TV reports on today's meeting of the King County Canvassing Board. The main issue was the 116 bags containing roughly 15,000 absentee ballots which were dropped off at polling places on Election Day. The bags were improperly sealed, in some cases because of overstuffing, and required canvassing board review before the ballots could be counted. These represented 20% of all polling place ballot bags. Elections staff acknowledged today that they've known these problems have been similarly frequent in recent years, yet they had neither disclosed the problems nor corrected the procedures. Details and photos follow:

A list of the bags in question, with polling places and problems is here.

The bags are supposed to contain a transmittal sheet, indicating the polling place, the number of ballots in the bag and signed by the inspector and a poll judge. The bag is to be sealed with a numbered seal and delivered to a regional depot by the inspector along with the regular and provisional ballots, poll books and other materials. The reason for the procedure is to ensure that there is an official chain of custody from the polling place to the elections processing center, and that no absentee ballots can be added after the polls close and that none of the dropped off ballots can be removed. State administrative rules require the canvassing board to receive a report on any broken or improper seals. All but one of the bags was turned in on election night. There is no indication that any ballots were added late or that any ballots were removed, however given the gaps in procedure, those possibilities cannot be eliminated. The ballots appear to be all sealed in the outer envelopes. The affected bags are from different parts of the county. The numbers on the list suggest that the total number of ballots is closer to 15,000 than the 20,000 originally reported. Fortunately, there don't seem to be any races that were close enough for these ballots to make a difference in the outcome.

The consensus of the canvassing board was that the ballots should be accepted provided that a proper chain of custody, demonstrated by properly signed transmittal sheet, is established and that the bags were returned on time, which would be most of the bags. In other cases, the election staff were directed to investigate further. There was little inclination to reject a bag, unless there was a reasonable possibility that ballots might have been added after the polls closed.

Everybody in the room, including members of the canvassing board were astonished to learn that the failure rate was so high (1 in 5 such bags) and that this not very unusual, it was just somewhat more pronounced this year with the large number of dropped-off ballots. Elections officials have been telling voters to sign up to receive ballots by mail and to drop them off at polling places. They could at least have given the polling places larger or multiple mail ballot bags.


This year's canvassing board. (l-r) Councilmember Julia Patterson, Interim Elections Director Jim Buck (Jimron), Prosecuting Attorney Chief of Staff Dan Satterberg.

Garth Fell, Assistant Superintendent of Ballot Processing and Delivery, shows a bag that had been overstuffed. It was unsealed, but taped partially shut.

detail of the above bag

This block of ballots was not placed into a bag at all, but was placed into a plastic bag and securely taped with a different kind of seal.

Although all of the other bags were delivered to Elections staff on election night, the poll inspector responsible for this bag claimed that it was overlooked when he returned the polling place materials to the depot. He delivered the bag to the Elections Annex the next day after it had spent the night in the trunk of his car.

close-up: curiously, the original seal number had been scratched off of the transmittal form and a different number was written in.

This bunch of ballots was not contained in a standard issue blue bag. It arrived in a plastic bag, and I believe without the transmittal sheet or any other information to identify the originating polling place.

Councilmember Patterson was displeased about the high number of improperly sealed ballot bags. She was even more surprised to learn that this was a known problem that hadn't been corrected. This is the first time that I can recall seeing her express strong criticism of the Elections office. She introduced a motion for a written statement from the Canvassing Board to the Elections office to analyze and correct this problem with revised procedures and improved training. Her motion passed unanimously.

The Canvassing Board moved on to the next item, review of questionable ballots.

This is one of several ballots that were rejected on the grounds that the voter signed it (this is according to state law; I can't find the reference to the specific statute or rule).

Next, there were "voter intent" determinations. The board is now following the Secretary of State's new guidelines. I wasn't able to stay for very much of this, but did catch this ballot.

[click photo for a view of the entire ballot]. This voter completely filled in the ovals on 12 races involving humans and marked his choices in all of the initiatives/referenda with an 'x'. All of the filled-in ovals were counted. The question was what to do with the 'x's. The board members agreed that it was clear to them that the voter intended to mark his choice with an 'x', but legally ruled them to be undervotes, to confrom with p. 6 of the Secretary of State's guidelines.