EVERETT — Early this month, Snohomish County mailed out about 545,000 ballots to registered voters. As of Friday, October 23, around 100,000 ballots had already been returned to the Elections Office, just under 20 percent of those mailed and well ahead of previous mid-term elections, according to Snohomish County Elections officials.
Election Day is Tuesday, November 3rd. But why wait until Election Day? Voting early helps ensure your vote is counted as a part of Election Night results.
Your Ballot
Here are some key details about your ballot. First, it has two sides with contests involving federal, state, and local candidates as well as statewide initiatives and county charter amendments. Be sure to place votes on both sides.
Second, use a black or blue ink pen, not a pencil, or other kind of pen. Fill in the bubble for each vote choice as opposed to an X or other mark.
Once your ballot is completed, place your ballot within the secrecy sleeve. The sleeve is purposely a bit smaller than the ballot so election staff processing your ballot can easily remove the ballot and get it ready for tabulation.
And critically important is signing your ballot return envelope. The signature is compared with your voting registration signature as a part of the ballot processing effort.
Returning Your Ballot
There are two options to return your ballot. The ballot mailing envelope can be place into the mail. No stamp is needed. Just simply place the envelope in the mail. It must be postmarked by Election Day November 3. Given some recent doubts about the timeliness of mail service, be sure to get the ballot into the mail by no later than October 28th.
Election authorities today strongly encourage the other return option – dropping your ballot into a drop box. Snohomish County has now 38 drop boxes located throughout the county. Skagit County has 14, and Island County has 7 drop boxes. To learn where the drop boxes are located, visit your local elections office website. Ballots also must be dropped off by 8 PM on Election Night.
But why wait? For your vote to be counted in time for Election Night results, it must be processed at the elections office prior to Election Day.
Election Office Processing
You can visit your local elections office and see how ballots are processed in person. There is unfortunately a lot of misinformation about how ballots are handled. Election office staff provide tours and explain how each ballot is processed and votes are tabulated in a safe and secure manner. See it for yourself!
A few years ago, Snohomish County opened its new elections office at the County Administration Building in downtown Everett. Large floor to ceiling windows and TV monitors permit visitors to see each step in the ballot processing. Staff can provide answers to all your questions as you walk through the facility.
Ballot Processing
Here is a short rundown on how your ballot is processed. Your ballot arrives either via the mail or from drop boxes that are collected each day. The external envelopes are scanned gathering the signatures for each voter and identified by a bar code singular to each registered voter.
The next step is signature verification. Washington State Patrol trained staff compare the returned ballot signature with the voter registration signature. During your tour, you can literally see this comparison effort in person. Only a small fraction of less than 1 percent of all returned ballots have a signature that is rejected. Elections office staff then follow up with the voter. In many cases, signatures evolve over time as people age. A fresh voter registration usually clears up the issue.
After signature verification, the envelopes are gathered into batches of 200. Seasonal election office staff then check out these batches of 200 like a library book, and extract the ballots from the envelopes, checking for any tears or other damage to the 17-inch ballots, then lay them flat, ready for the tabulation process. Once done with each batch, they check them back in like a library book and check out the next batch of 200, repeating the process for that batch.
Seasonal election office staff started their work early on October 23 due to the unusually high return rate.
The next step is moving the ballots through the tabulation machines. These machines tabulate the bubbles that voters have filled in. On Election Night at 8 PM, all those bubbles that have tabulated leading up to that point will produce Election Night results that will be posted on each county’s election office website not long after 8 p.m.
From the time your ballot arrives at the Elections Office, it takes a few days to go through the envelope scanning, signature check, ballot extraction, and finally the tabulation process.
You can literally follow your ballot’s progress by visiting votewa.gov/. The website will show that your ballot envelope arrived at your county elections office and has been accepted. Snohomish County election office staff expect more than 60% of the 545,000 ballots mailed to registered voters to be returned.
If you still need to register to vote, that can be done at your county election office through Election Day, November 3rd.
