Earlier this month, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump predicted that the upcoming election would be “rigged” in favor of rival Hillary Clinton, and he called for “volunteer election observers” to monitor the polls.
In Clark County, volunteers have been monitoring elections for years and uncovered no evidence or rigging.
“My impression is that Clark County is among the best in terms of managing elections,” said Karen Hengerer, now in her fourth year as chair of the Clark County Democratic Party election observers. She added that vote-rigging “is not an issue” here.
Clark County Republican Party Chair Kenny Smith said that local observers affiliated with the party describe the process positively and that state and local election officials do a good job. However, he said he and others have lingering concerns over voters being registered in more than one state. He’s also worried about voters forwarding their ballots and influencing elections in districts they don’t live in.
“Those are questions we’ve had for years, and I’d love to see someone take on those issues,” he said.
Greg Kimsey, who oversees elections as Clark County auditor, said that checks and procedures weed out voter fraud and prevent it from becoming a problem. But he said what’s really crucial in preventing fraud is the partnership between election administrators and citizens willing to volunteer to observe elections.
Kimsey said observers often raise issues that improve the process and instill confidence. For instance, he said that recently an observer called attention to an election worker verifying signatures too hastily.
“Citizens in the Northwest, especially Washington, will not tolerate election fraud,” he said.
‘Watching paint dry’
Under state law, anyone can witness the processing of ballots. But county auditors must also request that each major political party appoint election observers who undergo training to monitor ballot processing.
“When I first started, people said to me, ‘Karen, this project is like watching paint dry,’ ” said Hengerer, who has spent over 200 hours observing 12 elections. “‘You’re going have a hard time getting people to do this.'”
But this election cycle, both parties report an uptick in people interested in volunteering to monitor elections. The GOP has almost 100 qualified observers, according to Smith. The Democrats have 40 certified observers, said Hengerer.
“There are a lot of people who say the election is rigged, and I wanted to see if it could be manipulated at all,” said Katja Delavar, who has volunteered as a Republican Party election observer since 2008.
Delavar said she’s never seen any manipulation. However, she said that she and others have concerns about Washington’s vote-by-mail system. Unlike a caucus where voters can see the results, they can’t see what happens to their ballot after it’s in the mail or inserted into a machine.
But Hengerer, who described her background as being in “heavy-duty techie management” working at investment banks, said that she and other observers with technical expertise have examined the county’s equipment (which isn’t connected to the internet) and processes. She said they also observed election workers perform a test run on the computer that runs the final tabulation. She said they’re all satisfied with the process.
‘A huge amount of work’
Less than two weeks from Election Day, the phones are always ringing at the Clark County Elections office from voters calling with last-minute questions. In a back room, a Pitney Bowes Olympus II sorting machine whirs and clanks, scanning images of the signatures on ballots before plopping them into bins divided by precinct.
The scanned image of each signature is compared to the voter’s registration signature by a worker trained in handwriting analysis. If two workers question the signature, the ballot is set aside while the voter is contacted. If not, the ballot is processed further.
“Vote by mail is more secure,” said Kimsey. “It’s centralized, and you don’t have 70 poll sites with people of varying degrees of experience running them.”
Voting data is recorded onto portable memory devices that can only be read by special software on a computer that’s kept locked up until election night when votes are finally tabulated he said.
If a tattered or marked-up ballot can’t be read by the machine, state law requires election workers to determine the voter’s intent. Rich Cooper, elections coordinator, has seen ballots taped together, littered with notes from indecisive voters and lots of coffee stains.
Wide-scale voter fraud is unlikely because each voter registration requires a valid Social Security number and a signature that will be checked when a vote is cast Kimsey said.
“It would take a huge amount of work,” said Hengerer. “It ain’t going on.”
The process rejects ballots. Out of the 193,502 ballots counted in the 2012 general election, 701 were rejected because the signature on the ballot envelope didn’t match that on the registration form. One was rejected because it was from a dead voter. Hundreds of other ballots weren’t counted because they weren’t mailed in time, weren’t signed properly or contained other errors.
Just cynicism?
Washington has had some brushes with fraud.
In 2007, workers with ACORN, a left-leaning political group, copied names out of a Seattle phone book on voter registration cards. The registrations were flagged and the individuals involved faced felony charges. In 2004, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi challenged Democrat Christine Gregoire’s narrow victory in court and the ensuing legal battle revealed nearly 1,700 illegally cast votes in the election.
But Kimsey said that the drama brought a big magnifying lens on the state’s electoral system.
Since then, the state has set up a database allowing election workers to track voters who move out of the county or state, according to David Ammons, spokesman for the Washington secretary of state. Deaths of voters are tracked through obituaries and a federal database, and election workers can also check age and residence, he said. Election workers can’t check citizenship status, but that will change once the state complies with federal REAL ID Act requirements.
Despite all the efforts to ensure elections are clean, Rich Rogers, chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, said skepticism pervades, which he attributes not just to Trump but to a broader cultural shift.
“It’s not just politics,” said Rogers. “I think we have this cynicism in our society.”
