SEATTLE – Thanks to an abundance of candidates, initiatives and charter measures this year, King County’s general election ballot will cost an extra 24 cents to mail in.
The foot-and-a-half long ballot, plus envelope, weighs more than an ounce, pushing the cost of mailing it from 39 cents to 63 cents. A statement enclosed with the ballots warns voters of the need for extra postage.
Ernie Swanson, a U.S. Postal Service spokesman, said that even if voters miss the notice or otherwise decline to put more than regular postage on the envelope, the ballots will be delivered to the county, which will pick up the tab for the extra cost.
No other counties have reported similar problems for the general election, the secretary of state’s office said Thursday. Ballots can also be dropped off at polling places unstamped.
But Snohomish County had a similar issue during the primary last month. Elections officials realized only after the ballots were sent out that they weighed just over an ounce.
Snohomish County Auditor Bob Terwilliger said that after the county publicized the matter, most voters used the correct postage. The postal service agreed to deliver all ballots regardless, with a promise from the county that it would pick up the tab for ballots that weren’t properly posted.
The total is still being calculated, but Snohomish County expects to pay the postal service $15,000 to $20,000.
If no voters put the extra postage on the King County ballots, and all of the county’s 595,000 absentee voters participated, its bill would be nearly $143,000.
King County ran into similar trouble in 2002, when the ballots weighed 1.1 ounces.
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