It seems many voters waited until the last day to turn in their ballots for the Nov. 2 general election. Clark County Elections has received 115,594 ballots as of Wednesday, with around 45,000 of those ballots still to be processed and counted.
With those uncounted ballots, voter turnout for the election was 35.62 percent, much closer to the 30-40 percent turnout hoped for by elections officials. Early election results on Tuesday showed voter turnout at just under 19 percent.
In addition to which candidate to vote for or which ballot measure to pass, voters were equally concerned about election security this year.
Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said calls to his office about election security have “increased dramatically” since late 2016, after former President Donald Trump said he would only accept the results of that year’s presidential election if he won.
To ensure the county’s elections process is accurate, staff selected 600 ballots at random to hand count. The results from that count were then compared with the automated count.
“It was perfect,” said Kimsey. “There were no discrepancies, which continues an unbroken streak of perfect manual audits.”
Ballots received by the elections office go through several steps, with some of those steps done by hand and requiring more time to complete. For example, the signature on the ballot sleeve must be compared with the signature on file in the voter registration database. Each ballot is also inspected by hand and then scanned to create a vote-scan record, which is saved on elections-specific memory cards. The memory cards are then inserted into the tabulation computer to determine the ballot results.
“We can tabulate hundreds of thousands of ballots at any one point in time. For the processing of ballots, in general, our capacity is between 10,000 and 20,000 ballots per day,” Kimsey said. “That’s the biggest number we’ve ever done in a single day.”
Kimsey said the number of ballots a county can process and count each day varies. While King County may be able to process 50,000 to 100,000 ballots in a single day, he said small counties, like Skamania, may only be able to process 500 in a day.
“It’s a matter of how you scale up,” Kimsey said.
With his staff actively working to ensure secure and accurate election results, Kimsey said it can be frustrating to see continued distrust from the public.
“I used to say that any time we can get people more information on the election administration process, their confidence in the integrity of the process and the accuracy of the results increases. I can’t say that any longer,” Kimsey said.
Kimsey said it can be frustrating, and disappointing, when people aren’t willing to listen and consider that information and continue to distrust the process.
While that distrust sometimes comes from a lack of understanding into how the elections process works, it can also be outside influences like public figures and misinformation on social media that sow the seeds of doubt.
Recently, the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency launched a rumor-control site to help debunk election-related myths, rumors and misinformation, especially coming from social media.
Which part of the elections process voters question varies as much as the voters themselves.
“Mail-in ballots in general, registering people to vote, noncitizens being registered and voting, the software and hardware being used to process ballots and tabulate votes — you name it, we’ve heard it,” Kimsey said.
The entire elections process has a number of features built in to ensure a high level of integrity and accuracy, Kimsey added. Along with the federal and state government certification of the software and equipment used to create the election, process ballots and tabulate results, there are audits and testing of the election programming, an annual audit that occurs on Election Day, and the reconciliation of the election that occurs at certification, he said.
“The people who administer voter registration and administer elections completely understand that they are part of the foundation that our democratic republic rests on. They take very seriously the responsibility they’ve been entrusted with. In my experience, the people who work in elections — to a person — understand that,” Kimsey said.
Updated election results will be posted at www.columbian.com as they become available. For more information on Clark County Elections, go to clark.wa.gov/elections.
