Riling the base
When the original results from the top-two August 6 Primary race for Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands came out, there was a virtual tie for second place. Dave Upthegrove (Prefers Democratic Party) was ahead of Sue Kuehl Pederson (Prefers Republican Party) by a mere 51 votes; 396,300 for Upthegrove and 396,249 for Kuehl Pederson. By Washington State law (specifically RCW 29A.64.021) such a close margin triggers a mandatory manual (by hand, not machine) recount. To put this in perspective a total of 1,903,073 votes were cast among all seven candidates [plus write-ins] in the race. Jamie Herrera Beutler took first place with 419,297 votes, a slim 1.21% lead on Upthegrove.)
In what should be a resounding confirmation of the accuracy of Washington State’s ballot tabulator system, the statewide mandatory manual recount of the votes for Upthegrove and Kuehl Pederson revealed four additional votes for Upthegrove and six additional votes for Kuehl Pederson. Upthegrove retained a winning margin of 49 votes. The determination of the net additional votes for each candidate was made by a small army of trained recount workers in each of the thirty-nine county auditor’s election offices.
In Spokane County each batch of ballots (typically two hundred or less) originally run through the tabulator were brought out, visually inspected, and separated into ten piles, one each for each of the seven candidates, one for write-ins, one for over-votes, and one for under-votes. Two workers, working in silence and blinded to the other’s work, then count and tally each pile. If the two tallies were not in full agreement, each member of the two person team counted again. If the second count did not agree (a rarity) a second team went through the same process with that batch. All of this occurred independent of knowing the machine tabulator’s original count of that batch.
Once the team’s count was finalized for a batch, the count was compared back to the tabulator’s original count. In the Spokane County Elections Office there were 1076 batches totaling just under 145 thousand ballots. The vote counts were unchanged, confirming both the accuracy of the machine tabulators but also the accuracy and consistency of the human assessments of voter intent.
Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton explains that the hardest part of the task arises not in counting the votes but in catching and then discerning what some voters intended by the marks they made on their ballot. Stray marks, incompletely or lightly filled in ovals, over-votes (more than one oval filled in), under-votes (where a particular race is left blank), and scribbled write-in names (sometimes the written-in name of one of the candidates in the same race) all require discernment. Once the ballots in their security envelopes are separated from the mailing envelops in which they arrived, there is no way to get back to the original voter to ask of their intent. Ballots, once freed of their envelopes, are identifiable only down to precinct (which range between 35 and 1500 potential voters), not individual voters. Trained seasonal elections workers in the State of Washington use a statewide guide, Voter Intent (click the underlined to see it), to bring uniformity of judgement to interpreting the sometimes cryptic marks made on some ballots.
In the first count (not the recount), each ballot is first inspected to confirm that it is machine tabulator readable. If on account of coffee stains or other disfigurement a ballot is judged not machine readable a replacement ballot is constructed to be fed to the tabulator. (The original is kept and linked to the replacement.) The ballots are then fed in batches to the machine tabulators. Modern machine tabulators do a stellar job of picking up irregularities, such as stray marks, light marks, over-votes, and under-votes. A common irregularity looks like an over-vote to the software (two ovals marked) but might actually be a proper correction by the voter, who changed their mind after marking a candidate, drew the proper line through that oval, and marked another oval for a different candidate. The tabulator kicks out the few ballots in a batch that show any of these irregularities for further examination. A team of two people then review each irregularity and must agree on an interpretation per the “Voter Intent” guide. As good as the software is, it is important to note that humans make the final decision.
Here’s a key concept: The manual recount provides an independent reassessment of each original ballot as part of sorting the ballots into (in this case) ten piles. In Spokane County, that the manual recount of every batch of ballots in this race agreed with the first count is a testament to the accuracy of the process of the assessment of voter intent as much as it is also a testament to the accuracy of the count itself.
Side note: Before 2011 when Washington went to all mail-in voting, ballots were fed into an earlier version of a tabulator by the voter at in-person polling sites, today’s level of irregularity detection was not applied during the original count. The machine tabulators of the time only judged a vote based on the density of the mark in the oval. While they did kick out ballots with irregularities (only undervotes and overvotes) voter had already walked away. Since poll site workers could not interpret the ballot, the marks were counted as under- or over-votes and not as the voter intended.
Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton notes that the most challenging irregularity to catch is the illegibly written write-in candidate name that is actually one of the listed candidates above on the ballot with their own oval. Detection of ten such ballots out of 1.9 million may be the explanation for the additional four votes for Upthegrove and six for Kuehl Pederson tallied in the recount.
I am proud of the accuracy and civic diligence of mail-in voting system in the State of Washington. I daresay that I would be just as proud (albeit somewhat disappointed and even more irritated by our “top-two” primary system) had the original vote count and the recount favored Kuehl Pederson. (For more on the history of our primary click here.)
Election Deniers
The Washington State Republican Party, true to its brand of election denial (disguised as “election integrity”) raised doubts and objections, not by offering evidence, but by “just asking questions” in emulation of Tucker Carlson, the disgraced former talking head of Fox News. You can read the WAGOP’s full statement here, but here is the pertinent paragraph:
Among the questions: Why were some counties able to recount their ballots by hand in a day or two, while others struggled to finish their hand recounts on time? Why did so many county auditors reject cured ballots that they should have accepted? Why were certain ballots initially counted that were upon recount, instead “undervotes” that shouldn’t have been counted at all? Why are some counties using online “apps” to cure ballots when state law clearly says that’s not legal?
The Washington State Republican Party (WAGOP) intends to find answers to these questions in the coming days.
And then, oh! the threat:
The Party may file lawsuits challenging the certification. It may also file lawsuits challenging specific county recounts.
Will they file? Not likely. Will they win? No. But actually filing or winning a lawsuit is not the point, the point is the publicity attracted by the accusations issued in the form of questions. (Witness the sixty some lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign following the 2020 election.) All of this is in furtherance of sowing doubt in the validity of election results—all for the purpose of keeping the base riled up and suspicious of government.
Notice also that Jim Walsh, the chairman of the Washington State Republican Party and the likely force behind the election “integrity” statements above, is also a prime mover promoting—and getting the November ballot—the Republican Greed Initiatives. More about that later.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. When visiting the WAGOP website to see their press release concerning the recount I was greeted by a video ad by a young blond woman advertising her appearance on September 13th as a speaker at the Washington State Republican Party’s 47th Annual Dinner in Bellevue. In the video she declares that “It is more important now than ever to be bold, to be courageous, and to be unapologetic in sharing the truth!” So what is her “truth”? She introduces herself as Riley Gaines. At 24 years old her claim to fame is her prowess as a competitive swimmer and her activism as an anti-trans-athlete “Christian” crusader. She has appeared at events sponsored by the “Christian” nationalist Turning Point USA, founded by Charlie Kirk. Ludicrously, she has even worked to prevent trans women from competing in women’s chess. She is a 24 year old one trick pony. One might have thought that the WAGOP could come up with a speaker of more substance. (See Ms. Gaines’ wikipedia article for more detail and links.)