It's like watching paint dry or watching grass grow.
An observer of Walla Walla County's manual recount of the presidential primary described the process of sorting and counting 13,915 ballots over two days.
The manual recount was requested by the Walla Walla County Board of Elections after finding discrepancies of one to two votes in the vote totals from a reporting system through which local election officials report results to the Secretary of State's Office. Ta.
Walla Walla Elections Office to begin manual recount of presidential primary election
Comptroller Karen Martin, who oversees the county's elections and is a member of the review committee, said the fraud was not related to the tabulation machines that sort and tabulate the ballots, but rather the machines that upload the results. That said, it has to do with the software you use.
She said the error involves either write-in or overvoting, where voters select multiple options on their ballot.
After the results were certified by the state on Friday, March 29, the board decided to proceed with a recount to verify the results. In Washington, vote recounts are being carried out manually.
Let's take a look at the process here. The recount began at 10 a.m. on Monday, April 8, and ended at approximately 4 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9.
Over the past two days, 12 election workers and their supervisors from two Washington counties recounted every vote cast by Republicans and Democrats in Walla Walla County in March.
Jacques Mongin and Lila Ritchie sort ballots during the early stages of a presidential recount in the County Commission conference room as Democratic Party Supervisor Ginelle Reagor (right) looks on.
As of 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, the office was working to compile findings for presentation to the commission and the public. This process, along with cleaning, continued until Wednesday, April 10th.
A board meeting to consider the results had not been set as of Wednesday. For the latest information, please visit www.union-bulletin.com.
set up
Just before 10 a.m. Monday, election officials moved ballots stored in sealed boxes from the Walla Walla County Courthouse to the county commissioners' office and training room across the street from where the recount took place. did.
This space had six tables for sorting and counting ballots. At each table he had four chairs, enough for a team of two election officials and one official observer from each political party.
observer
Local Republicans and Democrats each provided auditors with a list of official party observers who could observe the sorting and counting process at separate tables.
Other observers, the general public, and members of the media could observe the process from chairs at the front of the room, but were not allowed to enter the authorized areas.
All observers were required to sign in and sign a form agreeing to the rules. Rules included a ban on disruptive behavior, a ban on political talk or campaigning, and a ban on cell phones, photos, and videos.
Auditor Martin and election supervisor Morgaine Bradshaw Morgan explained the rules for each new official observer.
Around 10:30 a.m. Monday, Martin told the first group of observers that there would be one Democrat and one Republican seated at each table, with a team of two election officials working in the center. I told you.
“I'm going to make this perfectly clear,” she said. “Don’t talk to the workers…don’t touch the ballots.”
Walla Walla County Auditor Karen Martin works with ballots in the county commissioner's office as the presidential recount begins.
Observers with questions or concerns about this process are directed to contact the party's official observer, usually the party chair, who will respond or pass their concerns to Martin or Bradshaw Morgan.
Martin also told the group that cameras were installed in the room for security purposes. She said the door to the room will be sealed with a number sticker throughout the night and will be sealed every time all staff leave the room.
election official
The staff conducting the count included six election workers from the Walla Walla County office and six from Thurston County.
Martin said Thurston County had conducted several recounts, and the visitor who helped had been appointed special deputy auditor for Walla Walla County. Each Walla Walla County employee will be paired with a Thurston employee to lead the count.
Sorting the ballot paper
The pair started around 10:30 a.m. Monday by sorting Democratic ballots by precinct.
The county processes the ballots in batches through tabulation machines, but a manual recount would have required the bundles to be sorted by precinct.
Ballots were already separated by political party. In Washington's presidential primaries, voters must sign a party declaration on their ballot envelope and vote for the candidate within that party. In Walla Walla County, Republicans cast about 8,700 votes and Democrats cast about 5,200 votes.
The team separated the ballots by precinct, counted the ballots in each precinct, and recorded the total for each precinct in each batch.
Martin said there are a little more than 60 voting precincts in Walla Walla County.
In the back of the room, Martin, Bradshaw Morgan and Les Bowen, a training specialist with the Secretary of State's Office, organized the sorted ballots into boxes by jurisdiction.
By about 2:30 p.m. Monday, all Democratic ballots had been sorted and red boxes containing Republican ballots had been distributed to each table.
Republican ballots were also sorted using the same process. The team took an overnight break around 5pm on Monday and resumed at 9am on Tuesday to finish sorting.
counting votes
By 10 a.m. Tuesday, teams had moved on to counting the votes cast in each precinct, starting with Republican ballots.
Workers sorted the ballots by candidate they voted for or type of vote (write-in, overvote, undervote). Workers then work as a team to count, verify, and record the number of votes cast for each candidate.
Once the team is done with one district, they move on to the next district.
The six teams finished counting Republican votes just before 2 p.m. Tuesday and continued counting Democratic votes. They ended around 4pm on Tuesday.
The number of votes per candidate per district was recorded on paper by the team. Martin transferred these records into a spreadsheet format, summed them up, and compared them to the certified results.
“It takes a little while to figure out how things look overall, but basically everything went well. ” she said. “We just need to figure out why the reporting system doesn't want to report it that way.”
Martin said Wednesday that the difference is one write-in ballot. He said his office will soon review the results with the Secretary of State's Office and a review committee, but a date has not yet been set.
The state also plans to work with the reporting system vendor to resolve the issue.
