League of Women Voters' Ballot Basics event details process of Skagit County elections

BURLINGTON - The League of Women Voters of Skagit County held a free Ballot Basics event Wednesday evening at the Burlington Public Library, continuing its educational series on local civics.

The event aimed to teach attendees about how ballots are created and counted in Skagit County.

Skagit County Elections Manager Gabrielle Clay delivered a presentation on the process an elections department must go through leading up to, and during an election. Many of the specifics were unknown to attendees.

The election department's system to ensure that the ballots are counted properly stood out in the presentation.

At almost every stage of the ballot counting process, there are two or three people who verify each other's work.

Voters' signatures, for example, are checked by a minimum of two people to ensure that the signature is legitimate, Clay said.

Not only are there systems in place to guarantee legitimacy on the part of the elections staff, but volunteer observers are also present to ensure that ballots are being counted properly.

Clay made good use of humor during the event.

She prefaced her presentation with a warning to the audience: "Learning about elections is super, super interesting, and super boring at the same time ... It seems contradictory that it's both fascinating and boring, but that's kind of how it is."

The boredom she spoke of was referring to the monotonous processes that the elections department goes through, but to an audience unfamiliar with these processes, it can be fascinating.

When done for hours on end, year after year, something like verifying signatures on each ballot can become boring.

Clay said that the elections department has four full-time staff members. Those four workers are responsible for comparing each voter's signature to the signatures the office has on record. Two separate workers must verify each signature.

Last year, those four workers verified about 36,000 signatures, Clay said.

One attendee at Wednesday's event said they didn't think it was possible for four people to verify that many.

Clay also spoke about how unique ballots are sent to voters. In Skagit County, there were 96 unique ballots sent out last year, each of which had to be designed by Clay.

The high number of unique ballots can be attributed to voter districts and precincts, which dictate the specific ballot voters receive.

During her presentation, Clay also presented data from last year's Skagit County election.

One notable data point was the low number of young voters.

Of about 36,000 total voters, only about 1,000 people ages 18 to 24 voted, and only 2,000 people ages 25 to 34 voted.

This was low compared to older voters. About 19,500 people ages 65 and older voted, and 5,800 people ages 55 to 64 voted.

Clay told the attendees they should encourage young voters to take part in elections.

After Clay's presentation, League of Women Voters of Skagit County Vice President Wende Sanderson moderated a panel with Clay and three volunteer election observers.

Allison Capelle served as an Independent observer, Brenda Cunningham as a Democrat observer, and Theron Wing as a Republican observer.

When asked why they signed up to observe the county's elections, all three said they wanted to see how ballots were counted.

Cunningham said she wanted to be an observer so that she could personally attest to the legitimacy of Skagit County elections.

"If somebody comes in and claims that something nefarious is going on, we want to have people there saying, ‘Wait a minute. I was there. I'm pretty sure I didn't see anything going on,'" Cunningham said. "It's an important role to be a witness to our system as to how votes are counted.

Wing said he had heard rumors of ballots being counted improperly in other parts of the country. He wanted to be sure that his county was counting correctly.

"I was totally impressed with what I found when I came in and started monitoring the vote - the number of different procedures that they go through, over and over and over to make sure that everything is done properly (and) legally," Wing said.

Clay's presentation provided transparency as to how the county conducts elections, and the observers' personal accounts seemed to give attendees confidence in their county's elections department.

Kathy Reim, a League of Women Voters member who attended the event, said she believed Skagit County elections were conducted properly, but the Ballot Basics event reinforced that belief.

She said she didn't realize how rigorous the verification systems are. Knowing that each step of the ballot counting process is verified by multiple people was comforting.

"I don't think I understood the complexity of the double checking," Reim said. "It's very impressive."

The League of Women Voters will continue its educational series on civics in May by promoting the Mount Vernon High School debate team's fifth annual public debate.

This year's debate will also feature students from the Anacortes High School debate team.

Students from both schools will be mixed. They will debate whether all funding for public K-12 education should come from the federal government.

The debate will be held at 6:30 p.m. May 7 in Mount Vernon High School's Old Main building.

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