Nov. 7, 2006

Higher than expected voter turnout

Even record-breaking flooding in some areas could not deter voters in King County, who turned out in greater than expected levels countywide, leading to ballot shortages in some polling locations.

Although Elections officials expected only a 20% turnout of poll voters, they prepared each polling place with enough materials for a 60 percent turnout. Still, workers in 55 polling places ran short of ballots and provisional ballots for some precincts.

Based on long-standing procedures for how to deal with running out of both regular and provisional ballots, poll workers provided several options to make sure every voter had a chance to cast a ballot. Voters could:

1. Cast a ballot on an electronic Accessible Voting Unit
2. Use a Chinese language ballot, along with a sample English language ballot: both have the exact same layout and proper names of candidates are in English, not translated into Chinese characters.
3. Use a different ballot style from another precinct with all the same races and ballot measures. Poll workers report that all voters at precincts with ballot shortages were able to use one of these options successfully. There were no reported shortages at the remaining 453 polling places throughout the county.

"Voters clearly responded to requests to cast a mail-in or provisional ballot by the deadline to make sure their vote would count," said Jim Buck, interim director of Records, Elections, and Licensing Services. "Despite the ballot challenges, staff made sure people could cast a vote. So ultimately, this big turnout is good for democracy."

Elections staffers expect to follow the tabulation schedule posted online at http://your.kingcounty.gov/elections/200611/resultsSchedule.asp.

Updated: Nov. 7, 2006
修訂日期: 2006/11/07

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