Ballot-Tampering Case Unsolved Large Number Of ‘Overvotes’ On I-695 Still Unexplained

A Spokane County sheriff’s detective can’t say for sure if some 5,400 ballots in last year’s election were illegally altered. And he can’t say they weren’t.

With the ballots long since recycled and no election workers reporting any suspicious activity as the mail-in ballots were processed last November, Detective Dan Spivey has recommended the case be listed as inactive unless new information is found.

“We never found a window of opportunity for (tampering) to occur with this number of ballots,” said Cpl. Dave Reagan, department spokesman.

State elections officials had raised questions about potential ballot tampering last summer, after a routine audit showed that thousands of Spokane County ballots weren’t counted on one state initiative because they had the holes for both “yes” and “no” punched out.

The ballot measure was I-695, which capped the fees for vehicle license tabs at $30 and required a vote on any increase in taxes or fees.

Because both holes were punched, those ballots were not counted for I-695, although computers did register their votes on other races.

Marking a ballot more than once in a race is called an overvote. Overvotes have been part of the controversy in Florida’s Palm Beach County, where some voters punched their computer card ballots for more than one presidential candidate.

Every election has a few overvotes. But in Spokane County last November about 5,400 ballots, or more than 18 percent of those cast by mail, were invalidated by overvotes on I-695. Almost all of them came from absentee voters, or from precincts that vote by mail.

Only about .1 percent of ballots cast at precinct polling stations, which are processed a different way, were overvotes.

State elections officials said it was doubtful the high number of overvotes on absentee ballots could have happened by accident.

Tom Wilbur, county elections supervisor at the time, was convinced that the overvotes were an anomaly. He suggested it was a result of voters trying to indicate they favored one part of the initiative, but opposed the other.

Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton, Wilbur’s boss, was just as convinced that the overvotes didn’t happen by accident.

In the clash over what to do about the overvotes, Dalton said she would demote Wilbur, and he retired in protest, saying he was being used as a scapegoat.

Wilbur still maintains that the overvotes were an anomaly. Election workers noticed some ballots had both choices punched for I-695 when they were first removed from the envelopes, before anyone could have altered them.

“There was nobody in the back punching ballots. It just didn’t happen,” Wilbur said.

Dalton said Wednesday she remains convinced that someone tampered with the absentee ballots in the November 1999 election. Mail-in ballots from some precincts had no ballots that were only punched “no” on I-695, she said.

“I had some people call me from those precincts and tell me, `I voted no; I did not overvote,”’ Dalton said.

No other county had such a high percentage of overvotes and “Spokane voters are not that ill-informed or stupid,” she said But none of the elections workers who handled the absentee ballots before or after last November’s election could recall seeing anything unusual, Reagan said. Detective Spivey reviewed security procedures and determined they were meticulous before the 1999 election and have since been improved.

Absentee ballots are now kept in locked boxes that are stored in locked cabinets, and access to the vault where those ballots are opened and processed is tightly controlled. Any time a box is removed from or returned to the cabinet, a log book must be signed.

Without a witness, or a confession from someone who tampered with the ballots, the investigation is being placed on inactive status.

“It was a long, complicated investigation that never really went anywhere,” Reagan said.

This sidebar appeared with the story: BACKGROUND

The ballot measure was I-695, which capped the fees for vehicle license tabs at $30 and required a vote on any increase in taxes or fees.