BBV: Op-Ed From VotersUnite

[JohnGideon]

Moderators: This was written by us at VotersUnite and is used with our permission.
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That pesky "consolidated" ballot. We thought we were through with it, but no. It's alive and well and still causing confusion. The story, like the ballot, is a winding road, full of twists and turns.

First, some background. No election software available on the market was able to handle the "pick-a-party" feature on our consolidated ballot. So, six Washington counties, rather than using four separate ballots like the other 39 counties, hired the election system manufacturers to revise their software at the last minute. And all six counties will be using that last-minute software in November, even though the old software would work just fine.

Washington has always required election system manufacturers to have new software examined by independent testing companies. But in this case there wasn't time, so the Secretary of State wrote new rules allowing the manufacturers to skip the independent-testing part of the certification process for this last-minute software.

Instead, according to documents on Secretary Reed's website, he gave the systems in the six counties "provisional" certification, which means the software may or may not meet federal standards but we trust it anyway. For some reason, he also allowed Yakima to use "provisionally" certified software, even though it didn't use the consolidated ballot.

A few weeks later, Secretary Reed told the Seattle PI that certification of the new system's software couldn't be done in time for the primary but will be completed by the November general election.

But on September 21, an official from Reed's office told a State Senate Committee that the software in Snohomish and Yakima counties was already fully certified. Then later in the hearing, the same official said the software used for the optical scanners — even in Snohomish County — was only "provisionally" certified.

Dizzy yet? There's more.

The auditor of one of the six counties wisely planned to manually recount all the votes in three precincts and compare the results with the machine results to make sure her quick-fix software was counting correctly. Then she was told not to.

King County's Prosecuting Attorney says it's against state law for auditors to check the software with a manual recount. But the Assistant Secretary of State says it's completely okay.

Several state legislators asked the Attorney General's office to settle the dispute, but they said they won't be able to figure it out until after the November election.

So, in November, over half of Washington's votes will be counted by software that is certified ... uh, uncertified ... uh, well, "provisionally" certified. And if auditors want to check its accuracy with manual recounts, they will be breaking the law ... or maybe not ... well, we won't know for sure until it's too late.