LWVSKC had 10 members observe during the King County primary election in August. A big thank you to: Susan Baird-Joshi, Mo Brinck-Lund, Janie Camp, Douglas Lucas, Sue Daley, Sally Walcott, Carrie Bagatelle, Marilee Gibbs, Keela Williams, and Ricardo Vargas.

In addition to observing various parts of the ballot process, King County Elections offered the opportunity to observe King County Elections personnel training for the primary election, for the first time.

Below, our LWVSKC members share their observations from the experience.

OBSERVATIONS OF TRAINING

Susan Baird-Joshi — At the King County Elections ballot tabulation process training in July, I was one non-partisan LWVSKC member with many observers affiliated with the Democrat and Republican parties. The trainer walked us through the process, from receipt of ballots, recording ballots, verifying signatures (outside envelope information), scanning ballots, verifying the ballot itself (how ballots were marked), ballot retention process, and daily ballot counts and statistics generation and online publication. The training highlighted camera, physical security, and logging, badge, and fingerprint requirements, as well as hand-off requirements throughout the process. The county used casino security firms to tighten building structure and security! There is also a separate observer corridor where non-trained people can watch the ballot counting process. One highlight was the map showing where people from across the globe have come to see King County's workflow and security access. Spoiler alert: nobody from Russia came. I feel privileged and humbled to be a trained, non-partisan observer on the floor of our democratic voting process. I was really impressed with the thoughtfulness of the process and the training. I was hopeful but confident about the ballot handling process before the training; now my confidence in our system is assured.

Mo Brinck-Lund — I observed on July 24, 2024 before the primary election on August 6. They were just starting to verify envelopes, but I couldn’t see the screens very well. One of the helpers there said there would be an ‘Opening Training ’starting soon and that would be good for observers to sit in on. A flock of part-time election workers flooded the room and sat at the tables. The class included a binder that followed the slides that were projected on two screens. The training was conducted by two employees, who took turns. I took part in the training through the end of the slides and left just as they were starting the hands-on part of the training.

It was very informative to see the care they take to make sure each and every ballot is handled appropriately. Most of the ballots go from opening to the machine that counts the votes; the opening step is the last time the ballot is associated with the mailing envelope that has the signature on it. Any ballots that are not perfectly ‘clean,’ those that have mismarked choices, handwritten notes, or physical damage to the ballot, be that parts cut off, or food or wetness stains, are processed separately by another department.

There are many audits along the way to be sure everything is aligned; they carefully track and count all opened envelopes to be sure the count matches the number of ballots. It seems like a tried and true process with lots of safeguards built in.

OBSERVATIONS OF THE ELECTION

Douglas Lucas — I observed August 5, at King County Elections headquarters. I was there during mid-election Logic and Accuracy testing of scanner and tabulation equipment. Afterwards, I toured the security-envelope opening section, as well as the signature verification section. Five election staffers were present for the L&A testing, one each for ballots, scanning, opening, ballot processing, and a director to oversee. There was one other observer, a Republican partisan observer. Notably, there wasn't anybody else there for L&A: no police/security, election technology contractors, local officials, media, or anyone else.

This was my first time observing, so I mostly just asked basic questions and tried to figure out what I was looking at. The election supervisors were very friendly, helpful, and polite; they made observers feel comfortable enough to ask questions and were helpful in answering them. I saw a print-out of hash verification and asked if the hash-generation process is ever observable; Manager Jerelyn Hampton said it never has been before. Personally, I think more of the cybersecurity aspects should be observable; the EMS window is there of course, but if things like hash-generation go unobserved, I think that's ultimately a potential vector for problems.

The L&A testing was fun to watch. They fed test ballots through scanners and tested if the output matched the input, so to speak. To make that happen, an election staffer read aloud from print-outs that input test votes — 28 pages of them — and another election staffer checked that the output matched the print-outs. They did this very fast and efficiently and by checking over their shoulders, I too could see that the numbers matched. I asked if they ever had a time when the numbers didn't match; they said maybe once. It made me wonder if these testing procedures could be forged in some way if unobserved; for instance, if one of the checkers read aloud a different number. Or, if they create deliberate problems or test fraud, to see if the election workers catch it.

All in all it was a very good, very interesting experience and I look forward to returning.

Douglas Lucas — I observed August 6 at King County Elections headquarters. I asked questions of the  scanner lead about the risk-limiting audit (RLA) system. He said their ballot marking devices for voters with disabilities do not output QR codes, but rather human-readable information. He explained that a Batch Audit is a smaller set of ballots that the poll workers have worked with; the Batch Audit aims to tell election workers if their various internal processes are working correctly. In contrast, the RLA draws from a larger set: all ballots that poll workers have worked with, which aims to verify the integrity of the election in an externally provable way. That's an oversimplification of the difference between the two, but those are the Cliffs Notes. The Batch Audit takes 60-90 minutes, whereas the RLA can take up to several hours. Only the latter is required by state regulations—the WACs—but King County likes to do both.

I did get to see a lot of adjudication. These were computer booths with two poll workers each. They would discuss the images of questionable ballots with each other; 99% of the ballots I saw discussed were overvotes, where a voter would bubble in Smith, cross it out with a horizontal line, then bubble in Jones instead. Such overvotes were easy to decipher for voter intent. I did see a single undervote, where a voter had left blank all the choices for a particular contest. I didn't see what happened with this because the adjudication workers were proceeding very quickly, and it was hard to understand what was happening. It was a great experience.

The scanner lead did tell me about Clear Ballot software, which stores the name of one of the two adjudication panelists per booth, so an adjudicated ballot could be traced back to one of the people who adjudicated it. I know some voting software such as Dominion Voting System does not store adjudicator names and has been criticized for such, but this is not a problem with Clear Ballot.

For the most part, I just walked around and familiarized myself with everything. Observing so far has made me more trusting of the system in well-run, smoothly oiled King County — save for some of the opaque computer processes — and made me more worried about the system in under-observed counties where small staff could be overwhelmed and therefore making mistakes, or getting away with fraud.

Marilee Gibbs — I loved my participation as an election observer and will be happy to do so again for the November election. I was impressed with our training session and found the staff were very helpful in answering any questions I had during my observation. I followed the ballots through the full sorting, opening, and tabulating process, asking questions along the way. I found I am a real process and procedures person, so I was really in my element with how well organized the process was and how everything has been thought out for efficiency, transparency, thoroughness, and redundancies. I especially related to the color coding of bins, zip tie locks, etc. Very low-tech solutions that are easy and clear to see.

I think we can be very proud of our Washington State voting systems.

Sally Walcott — Upon arriving and signing in, I was approached and asked to observe the Random Batch Audit. This is a manual count of one randomly selected race on six randomly selected batches of ballots to verify the count of the same race on the batches by the scanning machine. Six members of the staff are divided into teams of two; each team will count two of the six batches. Both members of the team first agree on the vote in the race selected on each of the ballots in their batch, then independently count the votes for each of the candidates as well as the counts of ballots that did not vote for a candidate or voted for more than one candidate in the selected race. The team members compare their counts (and recount if necessary until they match), and compare to the scanned result for their batch. Manual counts in all six of the batches matched the scanned results.

I also observed the scanning process. A couple of observations: A sheet with total ballots in the batch stays with each batch as it goes through processing. Every ballot even those coffee stained, water damaged, or torn are hand prepared so they can be processed. This is verified by processed numbers compared to batch numbers.

I also observed the manual signature verification process. They are first reviewed by a person who compares them to prior signatures on file; they are either approved or sent on for further verification procedures. Any approved are then reviewed by a second person who either agrees with the first reviewer or flags it as "Do not agree" and sends for further review.

I remain thoroughly impressed by the integrity of our election system. I wish everyone could see the professionalism of the county election staff and the robust security around the process.

Carrie Bagatell — I came away with a few interesting statistics:

The ballot counting process includes thousands of details that the general public probably does not appreciate. A few examples: there are reasons ballot envelopes have holes in them. Even the security envelopes get shredded, for example (easier to recycle). Ballot envelopes are stored for anywhere from 60 days (state elections) to 22 months (federal elections).

Considering how many steps are entailed in the ballot counting process, it’s nothing short of miraculous that the system works so incredibly smoothly. I’m really grateful to the people who work at the Elections Bureau for their ongoing efforts to manage and improve the voting process.

Mo Brinck-Lund —It was a slow day, long after the election, so the tabulation department was busy sorting through all the ballots that could not be counted by machine. The people on duty were more than happy to talk to me, explain what was being done and answer my questions. I also had a lovely chat with one of the full-time workers, who had trained the session when I attended the training. She conveyed her guiding principle, that voting is our way to acknowledge and show gratitude to the many people who have fought, suffered, and even died to get and secure this privilege for us. Quite moving, that.

In all my experiences at the KCE offices, it is clear that everyone is on the same page. Two principles guide them: Verify and count every vote and any time there is an ambiguity, do everything that can be done to ascertain the voter's real intention. I so admire the workers, the full-time staff and the small army of part-time workers who show up every election to do this vital work. I asked about repeat workers and learned that one part-time worker had been returning for more than 20 years.

I have the greatest confidence that this process is both as accurate, efficient, and transparent as possible. Thanks for the chance to see this process from the inside. It's an honor.