Thurston County confusion; Feds to monitor Franklin County balloting

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS  12 September 2004

OLYMPIA, Wash. About half of early Thurston County voters are getting it wrong on their mailed-in ballots for the state's new primary election.

This is the first time in decades that Washington state voters must choose a party - Republican, Democrat or Libertarian - and vote only for its candidates in the primary.

Voters here were issued three ballots for those parties, with nonpartisan races - such as Supreme Court seats and local tax measures - listed on the back.

But they also were issued a separate non-partisan ballot.

Some voters apparently missed the nonpartisan section of their party ballots and are sending in two ballots - one for the party of their choice and one for the nonpartisan races. 
All are being counted, but it's a time-consuming process, county Auditor Kim Wyman said Friday.

Ballot styles around the state vary by county. Six Puget Sound-area counties, for example, have all three parties on a single ballot - and the error rate being seen in Thurston County was not being duplicated elsewhere, Secretary of State Sam Reed said Friday.

"It appears to be a bit of an anomaly. Unfortunately, it does slow things down," Reed said.

Working in pairs for security reasons, county election workers have begun transferring the nonpartisan votes to whichever partisan ballot the voter sent in, Wyman said.

"We actually have a log for each and every ballot," Wyman said. "If there was ever a question and someone wanted to see that, we could do that."

The process has been standard practice for years in cases where, for example, a ballot was damaged and had to be duplicated to be counted by a machine, she and Reed said.

Randy Scott, a Democratic candidate in the seven-person race for the 22nd Legislative District seat, said he's worried the election could end up in court.

Reed said he doesn't anticipate that, though many voters have complained loudly about not being able to vote across party lines as they could under old "blanket primary." That was barred recently by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that each party should be able to its own candidates.

"There may be some grousing, but I really don't see a basis for any court challenges," Reed said.

The decision to count the extra ballots was made months ago by Reed's office.

"We realized this was the first time in 70 years we've had this kind of system," he said. "So we were trying to be as flexible as possible to help the voters.

"What you don't like to do is throw the votes out."

Meanwhile, across the Cascades in Franklin County, those red, white and blue "I voted" stickers will be available in a Spanish-language version this year.

It's not just a matter of political correctness.

The county's polling places will be inspected Tuesday by attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department's Voting Rights Section.

The county was advised two years ago that it was subject to the bilingual provision of the Voting Rights Act, which requires foreign-language ballots when 5 percent or more of the voting-age population are members of a single-language minority - Spanish, in this case.

Franklin County provided bilingual ballots for the November 2002 election and has been scrambling to provide bilingual sample ballots, bilingual poll workers - even the "Yo vot" stickers - for this year's balloting.

On Friday, Linda Cuevas, 24, of Pasco sat through an hour of instruction for her second stint as a poll translator.

"It's important," she said. "We need all people to vote. The more bilingual workers the better - we'll get more people to come in and vote."