(The Center Square) – Voter turnout for Tuesday’s election is lagging behind what it was in 2020, based on numbers of ballots returned as of Friday.
According to the Washington Secretary of State’s Office, just under 43% of voters had mailed back their ballots as of Friday, while in 2020, nearly 65% of voters had returned their ballot four days before election day.
King County Elections Communications Manager Halei Watkins told The Center Square there could be a couple reasons why ballots are coming in more slowly.
“We saw a super strong first weekend of voting in 2020,” said Watkins, who noted just in King County on the first weekend of voting in 2020 they collected more than 200,000 ballots from drop boxes.
“We collected more like 50,000 this year so it wasn’t quite the same as in 2020, but remember there were all those concerns with USPS [United States Postal Service] that year, so a lot more people were using drop boxes,” said Watkins.
America was also in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, which created more problems for the Postal Service.
According to a 2020 report from the USC Gould School of Law, the debate over voting by mail reached a peak in mid-August with increasing reports of controversial Postal Service initiatives, including canceling services, restricting overtime and removing mail-sorting machines and collection boxes. Petitions to “save the post office” sprang up online, and #SaveTheUSPS began trending on social media.
USPS responded by announcing that it would pause several changes until after the November election.
As previously reported by The Center Square, about 250 voters in Whitman County in southeast Washington did not receive their ballots this year for the Nov. 5 election.
The Whitman County Auditor reported the ballots arrived at the post office, but what happened from there is unclear.
The auditor urged voters to call their office at 509-397-5284 if they did not receive a ballot. Any voter in any county who is missing their ballot can print a replacement by signing in to vote.wa.gov.
Election officials across the state have beefed up patrols and surveillance at drop box locations following last week’s arsons at drop boxes in Vancouver, Wash., and Portland, Ore.
Hundreds of voters whose ballots burned in the Vancouver fire have been contacted to fill out new ballots.
The FBI continues its investigation with no news of an arrest to date.
Washington has 4,995,864 registered voters for the Nov. 5 election and 2,362,291 ballots had been returned as of Friday.
More than 70% of voters over the age of 65 got their ballots in early, while only 26% of voters between 18-24 had their ballots back four days before their election.
22,320 voters who returned their ballot are sitting in the “challenged” bin, which means there are issues with their signature or some other problem with the ballot that may disqualify them from being counted unless voters rectify the issue.
Election staff have been contacting voters with challenged ballots by email, phone call, text alert and through letters in the mail.
Four counties have more than 2% of ballots being challenged and those include Adams, Grant, Kitsap and Stevens counties.
Watkins told The Center Square that as of Monday, her office had sent “Just over 8,000 signature challenge letters thus far in this election and have processed 1,879 returned forms thus far.”
Also as of Monday morning, Watkins said 132,000 King County voters had subscribed for ballot alerts.
According to SOS, more than 58% of ballots returned so far were left in a drop box.
40.99% came in through the mail and .093% were returned by another method like an in-person voting center.
Voters who need help with their ballot or just prefer to drop the ballot in person at an election center can find a list of locations and times that those are open Monday and Tuesday on their county elections page. A list of locations for King County is linked here.
