King County Ballots Mailed: Here's What To Know For 2020

RENTON, WA — King County Elections on Wednesday mailed nearly 1.4 million ballots to registered voters ahead of the 2020 General Election on Nov. 3. Officials aim to break the county's voter participation record and are optimistic that turnout could hit 90 percent for the first time. Typically, turnout percentages for a presidential election in King County land in the low 80s.

"We project 90 percent voter turnout because we're ready and prepared to make sure every vote counts," said Julie Wise, director of King County Elections. "Our democracy works best when everyone has the opportunity to make their voice heard. Voters should keep an eye out for their ballot and make a plan to vote early."

This year's ballot is packed with 118 candidates competing in 64 federal, state and local races. There are a total of six state ballot measures and 16 local measures, including seven that are county-wide.

Key dates from King County Elections:

Oct. 14: Ballots mailed to registered voters
Oct. 15: All dropboxes open
Oct. 19: Voters should have their ballot by this date
Oct. 26: Online and mail voter registration deadline
Nov. 3: Election Day. Ballots must be postmarked by this date and drop boxes close promptly at 8 p.m.

In Washington, those who still need to register or update their voter information may do so online or by mail through Oct. 26. After that date, registration can only be done in-person at a designated Vote Center up until 8 p.m. on Election Day.

Helpful links for King County voters:

• Register to vote or update registration online
• Find your nearest vote center
• Drop box locations
• Voters' pamphlet

King County Elections Director Julie Wise chatted with Patch about the preparations for a likely influx of ballots, election security and keeping operations streamlined during the COVID-19 pandemic:

Here's are a few highlights (edited for clarity and length):

Confidence in voting by mail:

"We really benefit here in King County from having been vote-by-mail for a decade...[and] the partnership and relationship that we have built with our local postal partners. We meet with them outside of an election monthly or weekly, and during the election daily."

"The United States Postal Service handles 433 million pieces of mail a day. Our 1.4 million ballots are really a drop in the bucket to them. It has that official election mail indicia on it, and they well-versed in how critically important it is to expedite ballots out to voters and back to our elections facility. I have the utmost confidence in our local postal partners here that we're going to see the same level of outstanding service."

"Voters should definitely, if they have any qualms or any concerns, use a dropbox. We've added three in just the last couple of weeks: one at South Seattle College, Black Diamond Library, Carnation Library. There's even more out there than maybe the last time they used dropboxes. That is going to my team — my paid election staff are going to pick that up daily — and if that's your comfort zone, then use that. Whatever is most comfortable to voters."

When to expect your ballot:

"Oct. 14, we're going to send out 1.4 million registered voters their ballots. We've got an intelligent mail barcode from the United States Postal Service on each of those ballots as they head out for voters. We believe that those ballots will be in the hands of voters within five days, which is the service delivery agreement between the Post Office."

"We are on a strong messaging spree to encourage any voter who does not have their ballot in their hand after Oct. 19 — check in your mailbox — that means you should call us on Oct. 20 if you don't have a ballot in hand. You can call us at 206-296-VOTE or go online and get a replacement ballot. We know in the primary 99.96 percent of voters received their ballot within those five days."

Make a voting plan and vote early:

"If [voters] use USPS, we strongly encourage they do that by the Friday before Election Day, so they don't worry about getting that on-time postmark. We can receive it a week after the election and it still counts, but it does need to get that postmark. If they use their dropboxes — we've got 72 — 96 percent of our voters have a dropbox within just a three-mile radius."

"We're looking at half a million voters, what our data tells us, going out on Election Day to return a ballot a dropbox. We think that is a bad idea. We think people should return their ballots earlier than that and not get into lines and rush."

Fraud prevention & election security:

"Vote-by-mail is a secure, accessible and accurate voting system that we've used in this country for 150 years. When you look at the actual data around concerns around voter fraud and vote-by-mail, the actual data is minuscule. If we use the last midterm election of 2018, you're talking 100,000th of a percent. When King County compared our voter rolls against 30 other states' voter rolls, we identified only 17 voters to potentially have been registered and voted in two states. We submitted those 17 records to our prosecuting attorney's office just a couple months ago, after extensive investigation review from both state election administrators and the Secretary of State's office."

"Our state has layers of physical and cybersecurity measures in place to protect your vote and our elections. We really work tirelessly during every election to ensure that we have safe and secure voting processes. I'm really proud that I was the first election administrator in the country to ask the Department of Homeland Security to come and do a physical assessment of our building. I was the first elections auditor in the state to ask the state auditor's office to do a cybersecurity audit. We've really gotten ahead of this, we've got this."

COVID-19 precautions at the Renton headquarters:

"There is not a shortage of plexiglass at the facility. As you can imagine, we are welcoming about 500 temporary employees to help us process all of the ballots. There's no virtual ballot processing, that is a very manual, hands-on process. So, we need to make sure that both the 500 and our permanent staff and our voters are safe. We immediately got to work with Public Health and our facilities division at the office, [and] we secured a vendor to help us ensure that we could do so. So, again, a lot of plexiglass, of rearranging the entire organization really to accommodate and ensure that we're keeping at least the six feet of distancing."

"We've even changed a little bit of some of our processes, where you might see people normally side-by-side in teams of two, are now in front of one another with plexiglass in front of them. A lot of sanitation, supplies and encouragement of staff, of course, to wash their hands regularly. Staff are required to do a temp check when they enter the facility. They are also weekly required to answer the series of questions that Public Health has provided to us that we need to be asking them in regards to COVID-19. They are required to wear masks at all times, and gloves when they're processing ballots."

How ballots get picked up, processed and counted:

"Regardless of how the voter returns their ballot, King County Elections is going to be picking up ballots daily at the United States Postal Service, as well as our drop boxes. We bring those to our secure facility in Renton. [The] first thing they do is they go through a sorting machine. That sorting machine is going to scan in your barcode, your voter ID information, and it's going to go up on our website so that now you can track your ballot."

"The next step is going to go to signature verification, so they're going to want to watch and make sure it clears that. All ballots go into these sorters. We've got high-speed sorters. These are 40,000 pieces of mail per machine, two machines. They are also taking a picture of your signature on the back of your return envelope, so we can do that manual, person, eye-to-eye signature comparison to what's on your return envelope to what's on your voter registration record.

"That sorting machine is smart, it's going to look for ink detection on that signature line. The name of the game at sorting is to get 99 percent of the ballots that are good and ready to go through opening, all the way through, so that we have meaningful results on Election Night."

"[After] sorting, it goes to signature verification. Again, this is a human process, this isn't computer verification, this is staff that's trained by Washington State Patrol. A lot of voters' signatures come from the Department of Licensing. So, if people are worried their signature won't match, I encourage people: pull out your Washington state ID card or your driver's license and let that be a reminder to you of how you signed for us."

"About 1 percent of those signatures are going to be challenged, and this is our way in vote-by-mail to ensure that only the voter voted their ballot and no one else did. That's how we secure that piece of the election process, so that's why we need to do that comparison and why it's so critical. If there's any issue with that, we're going to start reaching out to the voter."

"Once it gets to opening, the staff are quickly removing that security sleeve that you've tucked your ballot into from that outer envelope that has your information on it. That is where we are severing the tie between the voter. Because the voter is good to go, their signature matches, everything's fine, we need to process that ballot. We need to separate that identity from your vote, you have the right to have a secure, private vote and ballot."

"Here in King County, we have a digital scan system. That means the system is basically taking a photocopy, a digital scan, of the ballot. We're going to then send it out through the scan. It is not tabulating results, it is simply scanning in the image of the ballot, the front and back of it. So then, at 8 p.m., we can 'push the button' that's going to tabulate to make those results."

"Tabulation is done on a completely closed network, air-gapped network, it's not connected to the network whatsoever. There's no possibility of hacking it through cybersecurity issues."

"It's all going to be scanned, that tabulation, into our high-speed IDML scanners. That sits there until we are legally allowed to push the button to run the report and get the data that then our staff will take out of the server room. They will take that data out on a new drive and walk that outside of the secure room, go to the computer that's connected to the internet, and upload the results report so that we can then upload it to the Secretary of State's site and to the King County Elections site. We repeat that process at 4 p.m. each day."