Track your ballot? You betcha. But be careful where you click, Washington voters

Misinformation lurks in plain sight with Election Day right around the corner. The News Tribune hosted a recent public education event to shed light on sophisticated threats to democracy. Now comes one more red flag that voters should heed.

Washington election officials are warning about an unofficial website called votewashington.info. You might have seen it making the rounds on social media. The site claims to have a list of registered voters whose ballots have been “rejected” by local auditors.

The website produces a potentially misleading list of uncounted ballots that’s not updated in real time. The confusion caused by the site drives home the importance of engaging only with credible information sources.

Two self-described “computer nerds” from Whatcom County are behind the site. Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman told reporters Thursday that she and representatives from the US Department of Homeland Security held a Zoom call this week with the two men.

Lester Meeks created the site two years ago with friend Jake Hartsoch. “I really had the feeling that they were trying to help voters be aware that their ballot had been challenged and putting that information in a single spot that was easily searchable,” Wyman said.

Nefarious purposes may not have been intended, but the website nonetheless caused false alarm in Washington’s 39 counties. Pervasive concerns about foreign election interference also attract federal attention to sites like these.

Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson said her office has been fielding calls from voters worried their votes won’t be counted. The truth is that no Washington ballot for the 2020 General Election has been “rejected.” The term is just a system code that signals to election officials the ballot cannot be tabulated until an issue has been resolved.

“There’s a difference between a rejected ballot and one under review,” Anderson said. It’s why voters should only rely on votewa.gov for secure, safe and official information about ballot status.

Meeks and Hartsoch may not be the bad actors that election security specialists have warned us about, but they do provide a cheap lesson in the school of think-before-you-click.

There’s nothing illegal about reposting public information, but this has the appearance of an official government site. It also claims to have no “political agenda to create distrust or discord,” but the fact it’s circulating voter information via social media suggests otherwise.

Here’s the voter data Wyman said is being disseminated: “Your name, first, last and middle. Your residential address. Your mailing address. Your date of birth. Your voting history and, when I say voting history, that’s what elections you’ve participated in, not how you voted in any of those elections. That’s all public data, as is gender and, I think those are all the main public fields,” she said.

It’s the same data that political parties and lobbyists have been using and processing for years, but it could also be mined for commercial use or matched with other data.

Perhaps the takeaway for government is to interface with voters in ways that resonate best. Where is the social media campaign reminding Washingtonians to check their ballot status?

Wyman says her office asked the men to take their site down. They refused but agreed to link from their front page to the Secretary of State’s site, which they weren’t legally obligated to do.

There’s no evidence of computer-hacking — all the information is public and found in voter registration files — but it’s nonetheless a dump of identifiable personal information.

“Anything that misdirects voters away from official sites and gets them on a third-party platform is suspect,” Anderson said.

She said her office will reach out to Pierce County voters whose ballots are incomplete.. Most often, ballots marked “rejected” are missing a signature or the signature doesn’t match the one on file in the registration record.

Voters have until 20 days after Election Day to “cure” their ballot. Out of the 279,580 Pierce County ballots cast in the August primary election, 1,310 were rejected for signature issues. .That’s less than one-half of one percent.

The Pierce County Auditor’s Office posts status reports after 5 p.m. every business day and will continue to do so until the election is certified Nov. 24.

As far as the he two “geeks” from Whatcom County are concerned, they saw a need and filled it. A best-case scenario is their website will be used to help voters get turnout stats or find out the status of their ballot.

But for those, we suggest voters turn to a trusted source.