 April 2, 2005 Search of half-million envelopes reveals 93 uncounted absentee ballotsElections officials today ordered a personnel investigation into the discovery of 93 uncounted ballots after a search through more than a half-million absentee ballot envelopes. The seven day search through approximately 375 archival boxes turned up the uncounted ballots left undetected in their security and outer envelopes among hundreds of thousands of empty, archived absentee envelopes. As a result of the discovery, Records, Elections and Licensing Services Director Dean Logan ordered a full personnel investigation into what happened and reassigned staff at the Mail Ballot Operations Satellite (MBOS) to other duties. Additionally, he asked a team of elections professionals, including Island County Auditor Suzanne Sinclair and King County's Labor Relations Manager, to perform a complete and through investigation into the handling of the ballots. "I am troubled by the discovery of these unopened and uncounted ballots and the level of carelessness that would have been involved in order for this to happen," said Logan. "I am greatly concerned about the repeated instances of poor judgment and incomplete processing at our Mail Ballot Operations Facility. These types of mistakes are unacceptable and corrective action must be taken." Through the course of responding to discovery related to the Republican Party's list of alleged felons, staff first discovered a bundle of 48 uncounted ballots Thursday, March 24. Staff brought the issue to the attention of Logan, who directed staff to perform a thorough search of more than 565,000 absentee envelopes stored in archival boxes at MBOS. "I share the frustration of the public. This error illustrates, once again, the systemic issues we face in King County to ensure that our processes and procedures are tightened and that adequate safeguards and documentation are in place to prevent these errors from occurring in the future. I will seek and secure whatever resources are necessary to prevent this from recurring," said Logan. The process of preparing absentee ballots for processing involves about 120 temporary employees. Incoming absentee ballots are sorted into batches of up to 400 as they move through the process of verification. After the voter's signature is verified and before the outer absentee ballot envelope is opened, staff is instructed to reconcile each batch to account for any challenged ballots that have been removed from the batch due to signature or registration issues. At that point, the security envelope containing the ballot is removed from the outer envelope. Once ballots are removed from the outer envelopes, the envelopes are stored in archival boxes at MBOS. Prior to the request for documents related to the election contest, staff had not accessed these archived envelopes since the election was certified on Nov.17. Election officials do not intend to forward these uncounted ballots to the canvassing board and have been advised by the King County Prosecuting Attorney's office not to open the security envelopes unless ordered to do so by court order. |
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Updated: Apr.2, 2005 King County | Elections | News | Services | Comments | Search
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