About my two hours observing SJC Elections Office this morning

||| FROM ALEXANDRA GAYEK |||

Important Voter Information

I served as an Election Observer at the San Juan County Elections Office in Friday Harbor for two hours this morning (Oct. 27), following sending a pile of questions about our elections process and security to County Elections Manager Camolyn Armstrong. Some of them were answered by Justin Paulsen a few days ago in her place, and some by Camolyn by phone last night. Some I will follow up with the Washington Secretary of State office.

This is some of what I learned:

As of today, 35% of the voters registered in SJCo have turned in their ballots, which is a noticeably higher turnout at this point in ballot receipt than in the Nov 2024 election, per Camolyn.

IMPORTANT!!! If you haven’t yet mailed or submitted your ballot, there are only 3 ways now to have it count:

Put it in an official ballot box before Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 8pm.
Take it into the Elections Office in Friday Harbor.
Take it to the post office and have the postal worker at the counter date-stamp it. (If you put it in the mail any other way, it will not be postmarked in time to count.)

Call or go to the Elections Office if you have any questions, need to register, need accessibility help, need to get a replacement ballot, change your address, etc. 360-378-3357. The phone is answered, usually by Camolyn herself.

What I observed:

Camolyn did the part of checking your signature on the envelope against past records, and registering that your ballot has officially been received. She didn’t open the envelopes.

Courtney, who also works in the office, sorted the envelopes into precincts. Batches grouped by precinct were than processed by a subgroup of the 24 paid volunteers (8 today), working in pairs I was told are bipartisan, around a large table. Without looking at the names or signatures on the envelopes, they opened the envelopes in a stack. Then they removed the security sleeves containing the ballots into a second stack and set aside the mailing envelopes, and only unfolded and looked at the ballot AFTER separating the whole stack from all voter-identifying info, and AFTER removing the ballots in a stack from the security sleeves. Each person in each pair on the team counted the ballots, so the number of ballots was counted twice.

The pair diligently counted and recorded the number of ballots (but not the votes on them) and reviewed each ballot to make sure it was clearly marked. The rules for setting one aside are very clear in the Voter Intent book I read that Camolyn showed me, and I heard those rules being used to decide whether or not to set aside every ballot on which there were questions.

Things that could cause your ballot to be questioned:

IT MATTERS if you don’t follow the ballot-marking instructions that accompany your ballot. If you don’t use the required ink, don’t fill the little rectangle, or are unclear and inconsistent in the way you mark your voting preferences, your ballot may be set aside for the Canvassing Board to decipher what you meant, without consulting you–because at that point, your ballot has been separated from any identifying information as to whose it was.

If you want to write in a candidate, be sure to both fill in the rectangle AND legibly write the candidate’s name next to it.

I did not observe a single comment being made by any person processing the ballots as to any voting trends they noticed even though each processor viewed hundreds of ballots. Nor did I hear a single political comment of any kind.

Once the ballots had been reviewed as above (“processed”) they were fed in batches by Camolyn into the tabulator, which quickly scans and records the votes, and spits them back out for storage. I was told this is a cumulative process, done over the whole period in which eligible ballots are received. The first report of all the votes scanned up to that time will come “Election Night” after the ballot boxes are closed at 8pm on Tues Nov 3. I did not observe any mention of tabulator results-so-far, and Camolyn told me results are not followed until the first report is done–after there’s no more opportunity to submit a ballot that will count.

The tabulator is stored in a locked part of the office, and no unauthorized person has access to the room or the locked area where ballots are scanned.

I will report on what I learn about the details of internal tabulator and vote count reporting security as soon as I can talk with people at the Washington Secretary of State office.

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