Spin Control: Ending the vote count on Election Night would have cut 23,000 ballots out of Spokane results

Whether President Donald Trump’s proposal to require all ballots be received by election night would make Spokane’s elections more secure is debatable.

Not debatable, however, is whether it would change how Spokane votes.

Based on an analysis of data from the Nov. 4 general election returns finalized last Tuesday, some 23,300 ballots – about 15.5% of all those cast – were received at the Elections Office after Election Day. Most of those ballots received between Nov. 5 and Tuesday came by mail, although some were dropped off in another county and sent to Spokane for counting in the proper location.

“This is Washington,” Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton said. “You can drop your ballot envelope at any county and we will get it to the appropriate county – but it does take time.”

It’s unclear what restrictions Trump would place on the post-election sorting and shipping of ballots dropped off in another county. But those who are longing to return to the days of making all voters cast their ballot only at a specified polling place on a specific day between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. would likely say that’s a moot point if they got their wish.

Voting by mail was slightly less popular than using the drop box, with about 52% of Spokane voters opting to use one of the boxes scattered around Spokane County and about 48% choosing to put their ballot in the mail.

But mail-in ballots had a higher rejection rate, with about 1.6%, or 1,158 ballots, kept out of the count for various reasons. The largest reason listed was they weren’t postmarked on or before the Election Day deadline. A total of 380 mailed ballots were rejected as “too late,” possibly cast by voters who may not have heeded the warning not to mail close to Election Day because of expected delays in processing by the U.S. Postal Service.

Voters who are out of the United States either for military service or on extended stays were generally able to get their ballots to Spokane on time. Of the 136 ballots cast by out-of-country voters, only one was rejected for being too late.

Some showed up in drop boxes, so they may have been mailed to folks at home for deposit locally, but voters as far away as Finland, Taiwan, Australia and Israel managed to get their ballots in the mail in time to be counted.

One in four of those ballots came in from Canada.

Ballots turned in at the drop boxes, which are emptied at 8 p.m. on election night then locked shut, weren’t as likely to be rejected for coming in too late, although there were some deadline problems with ballots cast in other counties and forwarded to Spokane.

Critics of mail-in voting allege it is subject to fraud, arguing “Who the heck knows who filled out that ballot before sending it in?” But ballots in Washington have to be signed by the voter, and that signature has to match the one on file at the Elections Office.

In this year’s general election, 343 ballots were rejected because the signatures didn’t match, and another 161 weren’t counted because they weren’t signed. While that’s less than 0.4% of all the ballots cast, it does show ballot envelopes are subject to close scrutiny before they get run through the tabulating machine.

Requiem for a survey

The Elway Poll, which has sampled the political opinions in Washington for 34 years, is calling it quits, a casualty of the ongoing squeeze on news media.

The survey had been a subscriber service for many years. Results of the statewide surveys frequently found their way into this column.

In 2018, it partnered with Cascade Public Media to provide political polling in the Crosscut/CascadePBS/Elway Poll.

But Cascade Public Media, which lost federal funding in cutbacks earlier this year, has closed its newsroom and eliminated money for the polling.

Stuart Elway, who had polled Washington citizens, local elected officials, and – for the past nine years, lobbyists about their view of the legislative session – thanked people for reading over the years as he announced the closure last week.

Elway’s data, and his well-reasoned analysis of it, will be missed.