Increased WSU student turnout has shifted some local races and extended vote-counting efforts as county officials say they continue to receive ballots nearly two weeks after Election Day.
Auditor Eunice Coker said most mail-in ballots typically arrive within three or four days, but absentee ballots from other counties and self-printed ballots are still trickling into her office amid historic voter turnout nationwide.
“We’re not done,” she said. “It’s a crazy election.”
See the preliminary election results here. Officials expect to release an updated tally of local votes by about 5 p.m. tonight.
Coker cited Democratic candidate Lisa Brown’s late-emerging countywide lead over U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers as a likely result of more students voting. She said voter drives pushed many students to transfer their registrations from previous home counties to Whitman County this year.
Students are eligible voters, Coker noted, but many are transient or may not have as nuanced of an understanding of local issues.
“We’ve got local elections that are turning over because someone told them to vote one party,” she said.
The voter drives, which added thousands of new registrations to local rolls, along with the increased use of self-printed ballots that must be separately processed and duplicated for tabulation have complicated ballot authentication and slowed overall counting efforts.
Coker said her office has sent out letters on about 277 ballots with ID verification issues and another 320 ballots with missing or mismatched signatures. She was “surprised” there have not been more.
Voters who receive letters to “cure” their ballots have until noon on Nov. 26 to respond if they want to have their votes counted in the final results. Coker noted some of those letters have already come back as non-deliverable, but her office will switch to calling voters on Tuesday.
With the influx of student voters, WSU Mailing Services supervisor Joy Rich said her office has also made ballots and election communications a priority. Registrations for dorm addresses have proven challenging as students frequently switch rooms, move off-campus, graduate or drop out.
“We did try to find where they went,” she said. “The volume was up a little this year.”
While most forwarded mail is processed first come, first serve, Rich said her office was instructed to process election mail as soon as possible. She noted Mailing Services is staffed by state employees, not postal workers.
As ballots continue to come into the Whitman County Elections Center, Coker said she estimates about 800 to 1,000 will remain after today’s count. She has pulled in other county staff and temporary workers to process the final ballots in time for the certification deadline on Nov. 27.
“We’re still going to make it,” she said. “Turnout’s been good. It’s just the volume and the (self-printed) ballots that is creating a backlog.”