A backlog of last-minute questions from voters slowed Whitman County election efforts Tuesday afternoon as staffers suspended scanning ballots and worked to answer dozens of calls, voicemails and emails from confused residents amid a late surge in voter turnout.
See the county’s preliminary results here. An updated tally is expected at 5 p.m.
Phones rang steadily throughout the Election Center in Colfax as staffers juggled incoming calls, walk-in questions and other inquiries awaiting responses. Some voters had never received ballots. Some had gone inactive when they failed to update their forwarding addresses. Some had simply misplaced their ballots.
“This is an interesting day to say the least,” Auditor Eunice Coker said.
For the third time since Saturday, Coker had rushed to the WSU campus to empty a full ballot drop box after student leaders called. Coker said she also had to re-stock the Pullman City Hall voting center with ballot papers after they ran short on Tuesday.
“Voter turnout is incredible,” Coker said, projecting close to 80 percent turnout. “This is as busy (as a presidential election).”
The election staff, consisting of Coker, election supervisor Mish Stanley and two temp employees, stopped scanning new ballots at about 3:40 p.m. in an effort to catch up with awaiting questions before the polls closed at 8 p.m. By 7 p.m., Coker estimated about 20 questions remained.
Just 6,449 ballots made the first run. Officials estimated another 6,000 on hand as of Tuesday night, but most drop boxes did not get picked up until today. The remaining mail-in ballots will trickle in over the next few days.
Some of the challenges continued to arise from large voter drives that left important information off of some registrations such as apartment or dorm room numbers, Coker said. Several students had called in trying to track down ballots with such issues. Some were able to print off new copies of ballots online.
Of the ballots processed by Tuesday, Coker said her office so far estimated 380 voters who would receive letters to clarify ballot problems. She said about 240 ballots still had issues with ID confirmations while another 140 ballots had missing or mismatched signatures.
Election observers from the Whitman County Democrats complained Tuesday of confusing or misleading information about the tabulation schedule. Multiple observers said Coker told the group ballots would not be processed Tuesday.
“One of our Democratic members was told there was nothing to see today,” an observer told Whitman County Watch.
Democratic observers sat in on the scanning efforts until it stopped around 4 p.m. Other Democratic observers later arrived at about 6 p.m. and stayed until the preliminary tabulation at 8 p.m. Whitman County Watch observed election operations from about 2:30-8:30 p.m.
Coker previously noted election staff would not “process” any ballots Tuesday, which involves opening and sorting ballots for scanning. Staff only scanned pre-screened votes into the tabulation machine on Tuesday. They were scheduled to resume opening and sorting ballots this morning.
David Elliott, policy director for the Secretary of State’s office, stopped by the Election Center in Colfax to check on the initial tabulation. He said he had made similar stops in Omak, Republic, Colville and Spokane earlier in the day. He noted other places had also seen late spikes in turnout.
“We’re visiting a lot of places,” he said. “(But) this is going on all over the country.”
UPDATE — 9:15 P.M.
Carolyn Cress, vice chair of the Whitman County Democrats, this afternoon explained she thought county staff would be focusing more on helping confused voters on Election Day instead of counting ballots. Cress spent the day at the Pullman City Hall voting center where dozens of people sought help reprinting misplaced or unreceived ballots.
“It was just confusing,” Cress said. “I thought what they were going to do was solve these problems. … A few people who were trying for hours, hours to get on the rolls and finally had to give up.”
Overall it was a great day with lots of enthusiasm, Cress said, but problems with getting voters reactivated on the Secretary of State website and the backlog of voter calls to the county were frustrating. Election staff in Colfax told several voters Tuesday night that high traffic on the state voter site appeared to be slowing down reactivation of their voter status despite county staff authorizing the change.
“Some people had to go home disappointed,” Cress said. “It was really, really discouraging, but lesson learned. … Get this done early next time.”
In a follow-up with Coker this evening, she said election staff today caught up with tabulating the ballots they had planned to finish scanning on Election Day. They have now counted 10,239 ballots. She still projected about 80 percent turnout based on the second-day returns.