John Servais has an important post on NW Citizen that discusses the need for more drop boxes amidst a federal assault on Vote By Mail (VBM) in the United States. In theory, if you put your ballot on your stoop in Whatcom County on election morning, it should be shipped to Seattle for a post stamp before 8:00 PM that evening and then returned as an "Accepted" ballot Wednesday morning. One supposition is that such last minute ballots were not post-stamped in a timely fashion in this very high turnout Primary. Check https://voter.votewa.gov/ to determine your ballot disposition for this election.
Data below the break. This post has tables which benefit from a wide screen. Here are my notes:
- Challenges Statewide: The largest rejected ballot category ("Too Late") happened 20,958 times. There is no ballot cure for "Too Late". 1.5% of all ballots statewide had a final status of rejected. The top rejected ballot categories were: "Too Late", "Signature Does Not Match", "Unsigned".
- Return Method: By Mail reported 3:2 over Drop Box statewide. This ratio would vary by county. See "Drop Box vs Mail by County" in "Additional Tables" far below. Important to note that King County received almost all of the vote by Mail. 7,365 ballots were marked "Too Late" in King County. See "Top Three Challenges by County" in "Additional Tables" far below.
- Return Method by Challenge: Counts for top three challenge categories for "Drop Box" and "Mail" return methods. All but 304 of the 20,958 "Too Late" rejected ballots came by mail. The amount of rejected mailed ballots far exceeds those dropped in a box. Drop boxes are promptly closed at 8 pm in most locations:
Return Method Signature Does Not Match Too Late Unsigned
1: Drop Box 4989 304 1035
2: Mail 6925 20488 4750
- Received Date for top three challenge categories. Many of the 20,488 "Too Late" ballots received by mail are two days late or more. About half of the "Too Late " ballots are 6 days late or more possibly indicating substantial mail delays.