In addition to a tour of the mail ballot processing operation, King County Elections also gave me tours of the provisional ballot processing and the polling place canvassing last week. Follows are some captioned photos of the provisional ballot processing.

1. Boxes of provisional ballots that were gathered from polling place materials by the canvassing crew.

There were nearly 13,000 provisional ballots cast in King County this election. That includes provisionals that were cast by King County voters in other counties and forwarded here. Provisional ballots are contemplated in the Help America Vote Act as a failsafe measure for voters who seek to vote at a polling place but whose names don't appear in the poll books due to election official errors. Washington state also allows provisionals to be used for other situations. In recent elections, between 50% - 60% of provisionals have been used as replacement mail ballots. They're also used as a "free" convenience for poll voters who prefer to vote somewhere other than their neighborhood polling place. A smaller number are cast by poll voters who forget ID. Some are submitted by people who can't remember whether or not they registered to vote, but are encouraged to give it a shot anyway. (And the prevailing culture among Democrat election officials and poll workers is to (unlawfully) let everybody cast a provisional ballot, even if they admit they're not eligible).

2. "Verifiers" matching provisional ballots to the registered voters who submitted them.

While provisionals are a necessary failsafe, they're also the most expensive and time-consuming type of ballot to process. The voter writes in their information by hand, and the verifier has to locate the voter's registration record from the details provided on the ballot envelope. Voters might give a different variation of their name than is on the registration record. An incorrect birthdate on record might not match the voter's correct ballot envelope; a voter might have moved since they updated their address with the elections office. Most difficult of all is a provisional submitted by a voter who isn't registered at all, because the verifier has to keep looking for the registration record and trying numerous reasonable possibilities before eventually giving up. The provisional ballot supervisor estimated that every bundle of 25 provisional ballots takes between 45 - 90 minutes to be verified. As of last Tuesday's canvassing board meeting, roughly 5,000 of the 13,000 provisionals had been verified.

3. Provisional ballot lead Lisa, who gave me the tour along with spokeswoman Bobbie Egan. She explained the new ballot tracking and reconciliation procedures, based on lessons learned from 2004. These appear to be sensible improvements.

4. Observers: one county Democrat (dreadlocks), one county Republican (blue shirt), and two from the U.S. House of Representatives, which certifies all House races. The two House observers are from the Republican caucus. The Democrats also supposedly sent observers, but they didn't show up to watch the provisional processing. The observers weren't well positioned to observe very much. The main work on provisionals is the verification in the cubbies (photo 2 above). But the workspace layout is such that it is not possible to observe them for any length of time. The most subjective part of the process, as with mail ballot processing, is the signature verification. Bobbie and Lisa insisted that the verifiers are trained at applying state standards for signature verification. Perhaps, but from everything I've seen state standards inspire little confidence. I've seen no indication that anybody at either the state or county level is performing quality control to measure how well signature verification actually works. (be sure to let me know if there really is some quality control that I just don't know about).

The provisional ballots are supposed to be tabulated last, after the absentees are all processed and the poll books canvassed. This is naturally done to avoid counting a provisional ballot from someone who cast a different ballot (Nevertheless, at least 100 such double votes were counted in King County in 2004). Apart from the initial voter verification, the provisional ballots go through all the steps of the mail ballots: opening, duplication, tabulation. An even higher percentage of provisionals have to be duplicated because the voter is often given a ballot belonging to some precinct other than their precinct of residence. The first stack of provisionals was originally planned to be opened and tabulated yesterday, Monday the 20th. That apparently hasn't happened yet.