A review of Whitman County voting returns from the 2019 General Election shows the more than 1,300 ballots that went out late due to a database error came back with a significantly reduced turnout compared to on-time ballots.
County Auditor Sandy Jamison announced in late October that approximately 1,350 ballots did not get mailed to voters because of an extra digit appearing on their zip codes. Her staff rushed to send those missing ballots in the final few days of the mandated 18-day voting period.
“I am glad we found them,” she said recently. “Obviously those people have a right to have a ballot. … My staff was really good. We just stayed late, including myself, and got those pumped out.”
After the election, Whitman County Watch asked election officials if they had calculated the turnout on the late ballots to assess any impact from the delay. They had not, Jamison said, but her office provided a list of the delayed registrations and ballot returns.
The listing included 1,327 voters who received late ballots. Election officials report 408 of those late ballots were returned and counted.
Those figures indicate that on-time Whitman County ballots saw a turnout of 45.2 percent while the delayed ballots returned at 30 percent.
“We did the best we could,” Jamison said. “I was pleased it was that high, frankly.”
While a multitude of factors can affect voter turnout, applying the on-time turnout rate to the delayed ballots would have resulted in closer to 600 ballots — a difference of 192 theoretical, uncast ballots.
The addresses for the delayed ballots reflect a wide variety of voters from throughout the county, weighted heavily toward population centers like Pullman and Colfax, but also including residents from Endicott, Uniontown, Oakesdale and other outlying communities. The delayed registrations also appear to reflect a variety of ages and appear evenly split by gender.
Jamison said her office could not identify a consistent trend that connected the extra digit on those registrations.
“We looked through that for commonalities,” she said. “Was it all Pullman? Was it a spattering of different districts? I could not find a common factor, bottom line.”
County officials certified the General Election results on Nov. 26 after reviewing questionable ballots.
Kylee Zabel, communications director for the Secretary of State’s office, attributed the ballot delay to a “keying error” while the mailing batches were being created. The error added the extra digit, which caused the mailing system to reject those ballots when they were being prepared for shipment. County officials later noticed the mailing totals did not match the registration totals and contacted the state.
“We instructed [Whitman County] on how to correct the error and helped them rebuild the ballot mailing batch in question in order for Whitman to still get ballots out with time for voters to cast their ballots,” Zabel wrote. “Prior to VoteWA, that level of support we provided to the counties wouldn’t have been possible.”
Zabel confirmed no other counties had a similar problem with zip codes during the mailing process. They encourage county officials to closely track ballot totals that go out and report any discrepancies.
Jamison noted the transition to VoteWA has presented some challenges, but the state has provided timely and after-hours support. County officials have continued to see some slowdowns or temporary shutdowns of VoteWA as the state conducts ongoing system maintenance or fix bugs.
“It’s taking minutes per person to register [new voters],” she said, “but I think the state’s being pretty responsive.”
Ballots will be going out again Jan. 24 for the upcoming Feb. 11 special election on school levies.