Idea of closer scrutiny met with mixed reaction

By Eric Pryne

Seattle Times 20 February 2005

Most Washington counties inspect every ballot before it's counted the first time. King and a handful of others don't.

When the governor's race forced a recount last November, those counties ? not surprisingly ? accounted for a disproportionate share of changes in the vote totals.

Elections officials in some of those counties acknowledge that expanding inspections would catch more voter errors earlier. But it would cost money, they add, and prolong the wait for results on election night.

Absentee ballots in every county are inspected before they're tabulated. All counties that use punch-card ballots, and most that use optical-scan ballots, also check ballots cast on election day at polling places, trucking them to the courthouse or another central location for inspection.

But "poll site" ballots in six counties that use optical-scan technology ? King, Pierce, Spokane, Chelan, Klickitat and San Juan ? aren't reviewed before they're counted. Instead, voters feed them into tabulating machines at each polling place. The totals are transmitted to the elections office by modem.

Those ballots are never inspected, unless there's a recount.

Last year, King, Pierce and Spokane counties accounted for less than half the votes cast statewide for governor ? but nearly two-thirds of the votes added and subtracted when ballots were counted a second time.

Elections officials in those counties say inspecting the poll-site ballots before they're counted would require new machines, more workers, more space ? and more time.

"In a county our size, poll-site tabulation has us completely finished by 11 o'clock," says Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton. "If we inspected all those ballots centrally, you're looking at 4 or 5 a.m."

Kitsap County inspects all its poll-site ballots on election night. Elections manager Dolores Gilmore says it requires 40 to 60 people and delays counting by 30 to 45 minutes.
  
  
King County, with eight times as many voters as Kitsap, would require more people and much more space, driving up elections costs, says elections superintendent Bill Huennekens. In addition, "we're under a lot of pressure to get returns out quickly on election night," he says.

Poll-site voters in King, Pierce and Spokane counties caught some mistakes themselves last November: The tabulators at the polling places were programmed to spit out ballots that recorded votes for more than one candidate in any race, or for no candidates in any race.

The machines could have been programmed to kick back every ballot that didn't register a vote in every contest, including governor, potentially catching many more errors.

But Huennekens and Dalton say that would have been impractical. Many voters intentionally leave some races blank, especially those that are uncontested. "It would happen way too frequently," Huennekens says.

Conducting elections entirely by mail would solve the problem, Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy says: There wouldn't be any poll-site ballots to inspect. But she's not sure she ? or Pierce County ? is ready for that.

Don Whiting, former assistant secretary of state, offers another solution: Label election-night results "unofficial," then inspect poll-site ballots before announcing official returns.

Paul Miller, director of election information in the Secretary of State's office, says changing the system may cost more than it's worth.

The 2004 governor's race was the closest statewide race in Washington's history. "What is the public's willingness," Miller asks, "to pay for improvements to any system to address a problem that comes up only once every hundred years?"