EVERETT – Snohomish County Auditor Bob Terwilliger is seeking legal grounds to ask for a recount of all absentee ballots in the 1st and 38th legislative districts.
“I’ve asked the prosecuting attorney about what kind of legal grounds there are to take this issue into court,” Terwilliger said. An opinion from the county prosecutor’s office was expected after The Enterprise deadline. If a judge orders a recount, the county will pay for it.
Under state law, the requesting party must pay for a recount.
On Dec. 6, state Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance called for a recount.
Vance’s position was endorsed by Snohomish County Republican Party Chairwoman Frauna Hoglund.
Vance argued that because the problem lies with the county’s ballot scanning machines, the Republican party should not have to pay for the recount.
The machines the county uses to count absentee ballots are geared to read only a dark No. 2 pencil mark, though they can sometimes pick up black ink, county officials said.
Vance said because it’s hard to know which ballots would be read by the machines, and which would not, the whole system is flawed.
“What my staff was told was that the machines have a difficult time reading any other color ink other than black,” he said. “When it comes to black pens, the machines have a hard time reading Bic pens – and Bic pens are the most ubiquitous pen in the world.”
At 15 cents each, recounting the remaining 31,100 absentee ballots in the 1st and 38th districts would cost the Republican Party about $4,700.
Officials discovered an undercount Friday, after the Republican Party paid for and received a partial recount of absentee ballots in the 1st and 38th legislative district.
The ballots that got counted did not change either race. Incumbent Democrat Jeanne Edwards beat Republican Leo Van Hollebeke in the 1st. In the 38th, Democrat John McCoy beat Republican Erv Hoglund. Erv and Frauna Hoglund are married.
Terwilliger refunded their money after discovering that the county’s ballot scanning machines had missed hundreds of votes.
An undervote refers to votes that aren’t counted in a particular race either because the voter left the race unmarked or because the scanner could not read the mark. It is common for voters not to cast a vote in all the races listed on a ballot.
Officials expect to see an undervote of about 3 to 6 percent. But the precincts that were subject to Friday’s recount showed an unusually high percentage of undervotes — up to 40 percent in some precincts.
Terwilliger is taking three steps to correct the problem.
• Instructions on absentee ballots are being reworded. Voters will be instructed to use only a No. 2 pencil to mark their ballots.
• The machines will also be programmed to automatically generate a statistical report after a batch of absentee ballots has been counted. That way, officials can see right away if the percentage of undervotes is higher than expected.
• And he will ask the ballot scanner manufacturer to install a more sophisticated optical reader that can read any dark mark made by any pencil or any color pen.
This isn’t the first time party officials have noticed a problem, Frauna Hoglund said.
“This has been an issue for several years with us — I’ve been talking about undervotes climbing for several years.”
Before each election the Snohomish County Auditor’s Office sends out about 170,000 absentee ballots, which accounts for half of county’s registered voters.
In the 1st and 38th Legislative District, absentee ballots accounted for about 60 percent of the all ballots cast in the general election, Terwilliger said.
Janice Podsada is a writer for The Herald in Everett.
You can call her at 425-339-3029 or send e-mail to podsada@heraldnet.com.
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