One-fifth of Snohomish County ballots may be disqualified

EVERETT – A test run indicates one-fifth of the Snohomish County primary election ballots are being improperly marked and won't be counted for partisan races, election officials said.

In checks of 250 randomly selected ballots Monday, one in five voters failed to indicate a party choice by connecting the front and back of an arrow with a line, even though they voted a straight party line. As a result their choices in partisan races cannot be counted under state election laws, county Elections Manager Carolyn A. Diepenbrock said.

"If voters don't make that first step, there is no way for the machine to count the rest of the partisan votes," Diepenbrock said.

Whether by machine or by hand, votes in judicial races, funding measures and other nonpartisan contests will still be tallied, she emphasized.

The test was made at the request of state election officials to help learn whether more advertising is needed on partisan primary rules, Diepenbrock said.

The primary next Tuesday is the county's first election to be conducted entirely by mail-in ballots as well as the largest all-mail voting in the state with 334,000 ballots sent to voters and 117,000 expected to be returned.

Failure to complete the ballots properly likely reflects two problems, Diepenbrock said.

"Partly, people aren't reading the directions, and, two, they don't want to pick a party," she said.

State law requires voters in the primary to stay within one party in selecting candidates for partisan races. With touch-screen voting machines in use before the switch, each voter had to select a party before being allowed to pick candidates.

This is the third year voters in the state have had to pick a party since the open primary, in which voters were able for decades to choose from among all candidates from all parties for each partisan office, was found unconstitutional.

Some voters write angrily on ballots about being forced to choose a party affiliation, and election workers have received as many as 250 telephone complaints on that issue since ballots were mailed Aug. 30, Diepenbrock said.