Return To Sender: Some Mail-In Ballots Sent Back About 5,500 Go Back To County When Voters, Addresses Don’T Match

The Postal Service has returned about 5,500 mail-in ballots for next month’s Spokane city election because registered voters no longer live at the addresses on the envelopes.

The county elections office expects the number of nondeliverable ballots to climb steeply because many people don’t bother to change their voter registration when they move.

City voters are deciding whether to form their own Municipal Court and sell park land on the North Side so the money can be used to develop a sports complex.

Returned ballots must be postmarked by midnight Feb. 2 to be valid.

Elections Director Tom Wilbur said ballots were mailed Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week to city residents who have recently voted. The nondeliverable returns came from that initial batch of about 23,500 ballots.

But 14,000 more ballots were mailed Wednesday to addresses that were undeliverable in June 1997, when the issue of whether to build the Seahawks’ new football stadium was put to a mail-in vote.

“We expect to get 99 percent of those back,” Wilbur said. The county is bound by state law to mail a ballot to each registered voter, even when it doesn’t expect a return, he said.

Wilbur said it’s too early for voters who haven’t moved to worry about not getting a ballot.

“Sometimes the mail’s delayed for a little bit,” he said. “There’s still plenty of time.”

Voters who don’t get a ballot by the middle of next week should call Wilbur’s office at 456-2320. No matter what the cause of the error, replacement ballots can only be obtained at the courthouse, 1116 W. Broadway.

“There are going to be some people unhappy about that, who will want us to just send them a replacement ballot,” Wilbur said. “But the state statute says we can’t do that.”