King County says taking it slow will mean more accurate count

King County chose to be the tortoise rather than the hare in Tuesday's primary.

To avoid ballot-handling mistakes that led to a legal challenge after the 2004 gubernatorial election, county officials said they sacrificed speedy ballot-counting and online result-posting for accuracy.

As a result, workers on Tuesday counted fewer absentee ballots than in any primary election in recent years, and about 36 percent fewer than the 2004 primary, when election workers counted through the night.

"That's the trade-off," said Jim Buck, who has served as acting elections director since Dean Logan quit in July. "We learned in 2004 the importance of every vote being accurate, and that has to be the overarching goal. Certainly we understand the need — either from candidates or media or any other entity — for speed, but we don't think we can take that risk."

That's a philosophy the office plans to adhere to as it converts to all-mail voting in 2008, he said.

"It was more important to them to get it right than to get it fast," said Nick Handy, director of elections for Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed. "This is a conscious effort by King County to make a bit of a culture shift, and quite frankly it's welcomed."

Slow machines, ballot accounting procedures and the decision to end absentee ballot-counting earlier in the night contributed to the low absentee-ballot count.

Buck said the absentee counting didn't begin on time Tuesday because party observers arrived an hour late; officials decided to stop counting absentee ballots at 7:30 p.m. so that workers wouldn't be fatigued.

New accuracy policies required officials to balance the ballot counts each step of the way, which frequently meant recounting batches of 1,000 ballots if, for instance, two ballots were stuck together and the ballot counts were off after they went through the tabulator.

The pick-a-party primary ballot also slowed down the counting of absentee ballots. The ballot requires voters to choose a party before voting in partisan races. If the voter fails to choose one, the machine stops and officials have to inspect the ballot, then run the ballot through the machine again to count the nonpartisan votes.

Buck said he hopes speed will improve once the county purchases high-speed tabulating machines. The department recently received a $4.8 million federal grant for faster tabulating machines and other technology, which will help the county make the transition to all-mail voting.

The Metropolitan King County Council has not yet granted the elections department the spending authority to purchase new machines. Capital Budget Committee Chair Bob Ferguson, D-Seattle, says he wants the department to submit a spending plan — before buying the machines — that names the company that will supply them. In sum, King County counted 45,000 absentee ballots in 12 hours Tuesday, compared with 70,000 ballots in 24 hours during the 2004 primary.

After counting absentee ballots Tuesday, the elections department began counting poll results. Those results were posted about an hour later than in the past, Buck said, because it took longer for workers to shut down the polls and because this year workers drove memory cards with the results rather than sending them via modem, which had been criticized as a security hole. Results were then collected at a location 25 minutes away from the elections facility because the usual drop-off point — the King County Administration Building garage — has been moved.

Poll workers also struggled with new voting units for disabled voters and the emphasis on accuracy contributed to slower poll closing, Buck said. Usually, the department receives the first poll results at 8:30 p.m., but this year they didn't arrive until about 10 p.m., Buck said.

Councilman Pete von Reichbauer, R-Federal Way, was disappointed with how slowly results were posted.

"I'm just glad I'm not up for election this year," he said.

By 1:45 a.m. Wednesday, Buck said, the department had counted about the same percentage of precincts as in past elections.

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958