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From local leaders and hometown heroes to breaking stories and in-depth conversations, the KMAS Podcast brings you the voices that matter in Mason County, Washington. Hosted by longtime broadcaster Jeff Slakey, each episode dives into what’s happening around the Hood Canal—government, education, small business, the outdoors, and everything in between.
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But we wanted to talk to you today about about two things. One is the Verified Voter Project that's slated to be rolled out for the April special election. Okay.
And we also wanted to talk about the change in the policy from the United States Postal Service for when they put postmarks on ballots. Yeah, that's a big one. And again, here with Auditor Steve Dunkel and Deputy Auditor Marie Stevenson.
A lot of people are asking me about this. They see the election is February 10th for this upcoming election that a lot of people are voting on. But then they're starting to see things on social media like, oh, make sure you get it in the mail by this day because it has to get processed.
Right. It's no longer as if it's handed off. Right.
You're good to go. So what's the change? So just to kind of take you through it, it used to be that when mail was routed from the local post office or to and from the local post office, it would go to the processing distribution center, which for us is in Tacoma. And for the for ballots, when they would arrive at the distribution center, they would get postmarked when they arrived.
Right now, the postal services, we've changed our process, changed our policy to where mail gets postmarked when it leaves. So what that does is it adds the flow time for the duration where the mail is at the processing distribution center and pushes that time and date out. That puts the on-time receipt of ballots at risk because we have to have them back eight o'clock on election day, either through the drop box or they have to be postmarked on election day for us to accept them as on time.
If it's after election day, the ballots are rejected as too late. And that's even if someone puts it in their traditional mailbox on the 7th or 8th. So what do you have an idea of the time it takes to get up there and through? So USPS is recommending to allow for at least one week.
So seven days. Wow. Get it in, you know, drop it in the mailbox or in, you know, the blue box or at the post office.
And that's just their recommendation because it's, you know, we don't want to chance somebody that's coming in on the 8th to put their ballot in one of those blue boxes and it doesn't get postmarked till the 11th. If it gets postmarked on the 11th, we can't accept it. I'm gonna ask, do you know why this changed? Who asked for this or how it happened? I don't know the genesis of the change, but do you know? I mean, we were just notified of it, but Marie did a good job of summarizing the Postal Service's recommendation to give yourself a seven day window.
Our recommendation is if you're concerned, use the ballot drop boxes and we're working to deploy a couple more in some of the outer regions of the county, one in Matlock and then Marie thinks we need one and I agree out. Toward the Hillcrest area? Hillcrest. So we're working on that, but also if you do want to use the Postal Service, take it to the post office and make sure you get a hand stamp from the postal clerk when you bring it because that will count.
And then it doesn't really matter how much flow time it takes to get to and from and through the distribution center and back to us because you've got that hand stamped postmark. The auditor's office here over the years has really done a good job of increasing, like you said, the ballot drop-offs. There's one right here in front of county office on 5th Street.
There's also on the website masoncountyelections.us is the website, is that right? I'll put the links to that too so people can click right through, but there's a map on where you can get those, a list of where you can find those. So you're saying that we could go to the Shelton Post Office with our ballot in hand, take it up to the desk there, and they'll receive it, stamp it in front of you? Yes. Do you get any other sort of, I guess after that, it's just like any other piece of mail? It's like any other piece of mail, but you want that hand stamped document that you were there on or before election day.
So here's a question. Can somebody take a picture of that? I know sometimes people ask about filming or taking pictures of their ballots and whether or not you can do that or not I don't know, but do you think that would be unacceptable just for a peace of mind for somebody? To document when they vote? To show that after maybe you get the stamp and you take a picture so you can see and then check on vote.wa.gov that your ballot's been received or I guess I just want to make sure people have an opportunity to feel like even if it was a week ahead of time, their vote will be heard. Well I think a couple things.
So people can take photos or videos of whatever they want when they're dropping off a ballot in the ballot drop box or the postal service or even up here at the vote center, right? What Marie and team have to go by is spelled out pretty clearly in state law and the administrative codes of what counts for a postmark and it's that postmark that upon which we base our decisions as to whether a ballot is accepted on time or or not. Do you have any in meetings with your colleagues across the state any ideas of the potential impact of this like on what you have traditionally seen in a February election versus what may happen as people? Well I'll let Marie comment, but I think in the last election you said we we saw a higher, we already saw a higher rate of ballots that were postmarked too late. Yeah so you know and as far as that goes all we can do is just try to encourage people to get vote early, return your ballot early, and then your chance of something happening is very slim.
If it's you know you've deposited into a ballot drop box, those boxes are open 24-7 until 8 p.m. election day and we're required by law to lock it at exactly 8 p.m. So if any ballots come after that, they're not, we're not able to count them. How are, how's the return so far? I mean how are the numbers looking? It's been a week or so since the ballots have been out for folks. So ballots of course went out on the 20th.
Monday we received 760, 700 something ballots. We didn't get anything on Tuesday. We got 187 today and then tomorrow we'll go back to the ballot drop boxes.
We're just doing that twice a week right now just to kind of maintain and keep the cost down for our districts. Sure. So tomorrow we'll go out and collect ballot drop boxes and so we don't really have a lot.
We're just under 800 or 900. We still are a fair ways out on this one and again the bottom line here is if you want to make sure you're good to go, vote now, get it in the mail or vote now, get it into one of the boxes across the county at least probably by the third. The third is the best option.
The best option in the mail, in the U.S. Postal Service. Now we get to the 10th election day. Let's talk about the process again.
You got observers coming in. You have the public able to come in and watch the process and all that. Yes and actually observers are welcome anytime.
But as far as the election night reporting, typically we have a greater turnout of interested people in parties who want to see how that first report goes and Marie and her team will be working throughout the day to process as many ballots as we can up until about lunchtime and then she and the team will shift gears and take care of any adjudication work that needs to be done and any reconciliation work that needs to be done so that when she reports everything will be as current and correct and reconciled as possible. Solid number. Sure.
So we'll get those at 8 o'clock-ish on February 10th. Correct. So what's this next thing you wanted to talk about? So I want to talk next about what we call the Verified Voter Pilot Project.
So I don't remember exactly how long ago it was. I think it was about two years ago now. There were lawsuits filed in three counties in eastern Washington.
Chelan, Yakima and I believe Douglas County. Okay. And they were lawsuits were filed on behalf of groups who were advocates for people with Hispanic heritage.
I don't remember the names of the organizations but their assertion was that there was a higher percentage of rejected ballots for voters with Hispanic surnames. So they were asserting that there was a racial bias being introduced into their signature review and acceptance process. So let's go step by step on this.
So on the back of do you have a sample? I don't need to see any of the envelopes. Yeah, the envelope. We'll get your signature, Joe.
Well, I bring it up because I remember I had to go in one time and verify my signature. So on the back of the ballots, on the return envelope, there's a declaration. You put your name and then you print your name and then you sign your name.
And if the signed name doesn't match what's on file, and I know people's stuff changes. Sure. Especially on your driver's license, you want to make sure it looks real nice and cursive and then you get to it and you kind of do this.
Right. Or when I'm signing my credit card receipt. Sure.
You're just like, get it out of here. But they go through a process. Yes.
And they check and then that's one of the things. Your ballot goes off to the side and they have a list and they contact you. So our process is the ballots get scanned through that scanning machine behind the camera.
I invite everybody to come down and check out the scanning machine. But it will go into the database in VoteWA and pull an image. Well, first of all, capture an image of the envelope.
And then we'll also pull the image for the signatures on file in VoteWA, create a file of all the ballots that were submitted in a batch. And then for the ones that it accepts or matches, it sends it off to our signature verifiers. And then they will go through signature by signature, ballot by ballot, and make the determination whether they believe that the signature matches or not.
Marie and I are intent on always having human eyes drive that process. And the signatures that you mentioned on VoteWA, that's behind a security, right? That's not open to the public. No, it's not.
So when there's a rejection because of signature mismatch or the signature is missing, that sets our whole ballot cure process in motion. And it's a little, it's got a few more, as far as signature rejection goes, there's a little bit more rigor and protocol put around that now to where it takes a second review on a rejected signature before we actually call it rejected and then start working the cure process. But for the cure process, Marie and team are sending people, well, first of all, they print out the cure letters and get those in the mail same day.
They follow that up with a phone call and or email or text message, whatever means we have to try to reach out and contact the voter, we're doing everything that we can because we want everybody's ballot to be cured and counted. So it sounds like what's going to start happening in April is an attempt to... So back to the project, right? So that's the current process. So the legislature said that they would like for counties to have the flexibility to explore alternatives to signatures as the means to authenticate a ballot.
And that's captured in RCW 29A.40.111. Okay, I'll trust you on that one. Yeah, I want you to research that. And so I had been putting the word out far and wide to see if any citizens had ideas as alternative alternatives to signature verification for ballot authentication that they wanted us to try or pilot under this law.
Okay. So we had a citizen come forward and they said, hey, what if we use the signature and the voter's date of birth? And we thought, oh, that could work. Long story short, it didn't really satisfy the intent of the law.
So we had a plan B, one of our elections team members already had a plan B ready to go, which was basically we'll capture the voter's date of birth and we'll capture either their state driver's license number or their state ID number. And what I thought was great about that is that it's based on objective data about the voter that's pretty unique to each individual voter. And it takes all the subjectivity out of the human signature verification process.
Because even though we all take the training year after year and we're trained by and through the Secretary of State's office with FBI experts, they are the first ones to tell you that no matter how much experience and expertise a handwriting expert has or a handwriting match expert has, there's always room for error where they either say that signatures match when they really don't, one may be forged, or they say that signatures don't match when they're really from the same person. So there's a little bit of room for error in both cases. So the use of the objective alphanumeric data from the voter, it takes all that subjectivity out of it.
It's very objective. Either it matches or it doesn't. So is this something all voters will need to have before they vote or is this only in the case where the signature doesn't match? So this is how the project will work.
First of all, I want to make sure everybody understands it's optional. It's optional participation by the district who's got something on the ballot. If they don't want to be a part of it, there's a mechanism for them to petition to the Board of County Commissioners and say, we don't want to be part of this project and we're happy to say, okay, then we're not going to deploy the project for this particular measure.
It's also voluntary, completely voluntary participation by the voter. So if the voter doesn't want to mess around with that or be a part of it, they just sign the ballot declaration as they normally would and return the ballot as they normally would. For those who want to participate, we've got a modified envelope and this is a mock-up that Marie put together with actual scotch tape and cut out with actual scissors.
Arts and crafts style. The actual envelope will be bigger, but this one, is this actual size? No. That's right.
The actual ballot will be bigger, but the voter will have a space here to put their date of birth and their ID number and then when they seal it up, they'll also have to sign the declaration, but when they seal it up, there's a privacy flap which covers all the voters information. The only thing that will be visible about this ballot on the return envelope is the ballot ID number, but there will be no information about the voter, their signature, their date of birth, their address, anything. Which is totally anonymous.
You can see the signature. Right, when they come back now, you can see the signature of the voter and other information. So for those who are concerned about voter privacy, I think this is a really good idea, but again, it's optional.
You don't have to provide that additional information. The purpose of the project is to use that date of birth and identification information as the source of ballot authentication. Say, yep, that's Jeff's birth date, that's his driver's license number, all that information is already in Vote Law, so we're not asking anybody to provide something that we don't already have access to and that will be used to say, okay, that's Jeff's ballot.
So is this something that you're doing to help state elections gather data on this or like with the idea that it would move on to a statewide or what's the project end goal then? Part of the project also requires that we collect data in terms of how many people participate in the project and I expect and hope to see our ballot rejection rate go to zero, right, because we've taken all the subjectivity out of it. And that information, in addition to, we're working on a voluntary anonymous survey to include as a ballot insert what people think about it, so we'll get that consumer feedback, we'll capture that and probably some operational data about how we had to do things different within the ballot processing operation, pull all that together, send that off to the Secretary of State, they'll review it and then forward that on to the legislature and the legislature then will have that information, that feedback for them to consider for any future changes they may or may not want to make to the election system. So we're not going to see this in the February, but it will be in the April special election.
April special election. So what if somebody is interested in participating but they don't have a state-issued identification with number? Well they can go get one or they can, if they don't have it, they won't be able to participate. So if you don't have a state ID or driver's license, you'll be following the old school method, sign the declaration, send your ballot in.
Okay, and again this is, so the idea came from voter groups that felt a certain type of last name was being overly analyzed or put off to the side for curing. That was the assertion behind the lawsuits in Chelan, Yakima and Douglas counties. Not here, not in Mason.
We're just moving out with the trial of an idea from a citizen. You've heard me say before, elections belong to the people and I want to get as much citizen involvement in our elections process as possible. So the idea was accepted by the Secretary of State and so we're going to give it a go.
Are other counties trying different things? Yes. King County has tried, and I believe Pierce County and Spokane County have tried methods where there is an electronic based mechanism. I don't fully understand it.
I haven't really looked into it because we were working on our own little idea. So other counties are trying other things. I like the paper article for a couple reasons.
One, it's observable. When observers are in the room, they can see how things are being processed and that they're being processed properly. And also, if there's ever a question or an issue or a challenge to the election, it's auditable.
We've got it, right? And we keep it for the period of the required period for record retention for that election. So it's good to have, in my mind, it's good to have the paper article available and in hand. You know, with every side of these issues, there's the for side and the against side.
What would someone's against side be on this? Well, the against side, people are thinking that somehow this will be an incremental step to requiring some additional form of identification for people to vote. That's not what this project is about. And the information, again, that goes on this envelope for this project is already in the database for when people registered to vote.
I told some folks that I was coming to talk to you guys today, and they said, when are we going to be able to have the option to vote electronically? We give our banking information freely over our phones. We have face recognition on IDs and things like that. But I know there's people that love the paper and going into a bank or credit union.
So is there ever going to be a time where folks will have an option to do one or the other? Don't know. There's a bill out there now to make a voter portal available for online use by UOCAVA voters, and I think tribal members as well, and also people who have a disability where they've got accessibility challenges. We'll see how that goes through the legislature.
I will say that the Secretary of State's office has been really careful about moving forward with any electronic voting capability along those lines because they're absolutely worried about security. And so I know Secretary of State Steve Hobbs has testified on that legislation this year, and I think he also testified on a similar bill last year. And really the concern from their perspective and mine, I'm always worried about vulnerabilities to this system, is whether or not that portal would be subject to hacking.
We talked about this last time, though. You got this room back here, and you can see it back here. It's like super secure, Faraday cage, off network, all sorts of stuff like that.
We tried everything to try to isolate our election system from electronic interference whether it's intentional or not. Because we have a door and window in there, a lot of those measures are defeated, but we tried. We learned a lot from it, and if we ever move to a new ballot processing center sometime down the road, maybe, we know what we would do differently in terms of construction of that room.
Well, you got to try something, just like this project is trying something. We learned. February 10th is election day.
Ballots have to be into the drop boxes around Mason County by 8 o'clock, because there will be people there. Two people per. That'll lock that thing up.
Also, think about getting your ballots in as soon as you can. Sit down now, make those decisions. February 3rd likely is the best drop dead date on getting it into the mail.
You can go into the post office here in Shelton and get that stamp. Any post office, really. And get a stamp to make sure you have seen that it has been accepted by the Postal Service, and it will get back here to the Mason County Auditor's Office in particular.
You can always track your ballot also on VoteWA. It will show the information there. And on the Mason County Elections website, it has a list of ballot drop boxes around the county that have become even more and more accessible.
I see them when I'm out driving. There's a ballot drop box here and there and everywhere. And these folks are doing yeoman's work to get your voice heard.
Opportunities for observation happens. You are more than welcome to come down here and watch the process as it goes on. Obviously, there's security and safeguards when it comes to people's private information.
But you can see it run through the machines behind me here, or behind the camera here. And right around 8 o'clock on the 10th, we'll start to see some numbers. We'll start seeing numbers.
So thank you, Jeff, for coming down. I really appreciate it. Marie, did we miss anything that we want to? I know you're going to be putting out, we're going to be working on some informational materials talking about the change in the Postal Service policy.
That'll be on our website. We'll probably have some posters and inserts and flyers, that type of thing. Sure.
And this isn't like because they're slow here or something. This is a federal change. It's a federal change.
And we just want to ensure that every ballot is counted, that we can legally count. We can't count it if we don't get it in time.