All-mail voting in King County likely delayed

King County voters who prefer to cast their ballots the old-fashioned way — at neighborhood polling places — might be allowed to do that in one more presidential election.

The likelihood that vote-counting equipment will be certified by the federal government soon enough for it to be used in vote-by-mail elections next fall appears increasingly remote.

Without that equipment, County Executive Ron Sims told the Metropolitan King County Council on Monday that all-mail voting should be put off for at least one more year.

Sims said in a letter to the council that the county was still on schedule to roll out the high-speed tabulators and larger database for use in a small May election before using them in the August primary and November general election. That optimistic view was based on election officials' claim that the equipment would be certified by early January — well before Feb. 1, the date by which the devices must be certified if the county is to test them and train workers on them this spring.

In a report that accompanied Sims' letter, King County Elections said an independent testing laboratory in Denver was already testing the equipment manufactured by Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) and was on track to "complete the report" to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) on Monday.

The EAC said it received a "revised test plan" Wednesday that now must be reviewed by the federal agency. It's anyone's guess how long it may take for the EAC to certify the equipment.

After the EAC approves a testing plan and testing is completed, the amount of time certification takes would depend on the readiness of the product, the completeness of information provided by Premier and the speed with which the company corrects any anomalies discovered during testing, EAC spokesman Bryan Whitener said.

Since the EAC was given responsibility for certifying election equipment at the beginning of last year, it hasn't certified any of the products of six manufacturers currently under review. Premier's application was put on hold for several months while the company addressed security problems found in studies in California and Florida.

King County Elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said officials "will be re-evaluating" the likelihood that the Premier equipment can be certified by Feb. 1. She said Premier is shipping two new tabulators to the county this week so election staffers can familiarize themselves with the devices.

If the Premier equipment can't be used this year, Sims told the County Council, its preferred solution — counting 900,000 mail ballots on a beefed-up version of existing equipment — carries risks that "outweigh the gains of transitioning to vote-by-mail."

Existing equipment simply can't handle that many ballots, election officials say. Their report to the council Monday said adding a second database to count mail ballots would be "an untested method," would make it difficult to verify the count and would delay reporting results at the precinct level. The report said automatic "feeders" and spare parts are no longer made for the county's 10-year-old tabulators.

County Councilmember Bob Ferguson, a supporter of voting by mail, said he wouldn't challenge the report. "The report's coming from the elections experts," said the Seattle Democrat. "If they're saying they cannot conduct an all-mail election with the current equipment, then I have to accept that."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com