This article will focus on the Commissioner of Public Lands race. We are awaiting records on other races but had requested records on this race first due to the recount. This article does not discuss the recount. This information is pre-recount. (We will cover the statewide recount in an upcoming article.)
There were seven candidates running for this office in the primary. The two candidates we will be focusing on are Dave Upthegrove and Sue K. Pederson. While the county results for these two candidates were not close, the statewide results were very close. 51 votes determined who would move on to the November ballot for the second candidate. King County gave Upthegrove the most votes and is responsible for his apparent win. But was it legitimate?
The Records
King County provided some records that were requested for the Commissioner of Public Lands race. There are two records required for this analysis. They provided one as normal, and the other record they provided to me in a different format than what they have given me in the past.
The only thing I had to do differently with the alternate record was format the time column back to a date and time, as they did not have it formatted this way in the record they provided. But I happen to know how to convert this no problem.
What I was able to do with the records is put the votes back in order, to see how they came in. I have the results for each batch on one record and the time stamp with batch numbers on the other record. Once I matched them up, I can see how the votes came in over time.
Concerns
There are a few concerns I have with what I see. Before I get started, let me be clear that while these things seem odd, we do not have enough evidence to say with certainty that King County has done anything wrong. We are suspicious, and their actions are questionable, but without more information we don’t really know what happened. That is the problem, however.
The first oddity I will point out is that Sue’s votes were very close to Allen’s votes the entire race. So much so that the two lines are overlapping each other, and you cannot tell there are two lines there for two different candidates. (See below)
The image on the right is showing only Sue’s and Allan’s vote totals. Again, not proof of anything, just odd they stayed right in line with each other the whole time. These are two candidates from opposing parties.
The undervotes and Jeralee’s votes were also so close that you cannot see the two lines in the first image above.
Here is what those two look like close up.
Votes By Batch
Now let’s look at the total votes for Sue and Upthegrove per batch.
Batches in King County were 250 ballots or less.
Sue is red and Dave is blue. Notice how Dave’s votes per batch started increasing after election day, and after results were announced.
When comparing the other candidates, Upthegrove was the only one to have this significant increase in votes after election day.
Ratio
Here is the Dave to Sue vote ratio for their running vote totals over the election timeframe. The concern with this is that it has a slope. We would expect to see it resemble more of a flat line.
This matches the above image, which shows that Dave’s votes did not come in evenly, as expected in a mail in election, where voters return their ballots at their convenience and is not counted by district or precinct, but rather mixed up in batches with other ballots from across the county. Instead it shows that Dave did better as the election went on. He finished stronger than he started, which doesn’t make sense when ballots are not sorted and are returned at random.
ALT Ballots
ALT ballots are the ballots returned electronically by email, fax, or another method and cannot be scanned with the rest of the ballots. When this happens, the staff manually enter the voter’s selections into the Clear Ballot system. There are supposed to be two workers reviewing these together. It is an extremely sensitive process due to the fact that they can easily be manipulated at the will of whoever is entering the info into the system.
If you use those numbers to check the ratios of Dave to Sue votes, you will find that they range from 6:1 to 11:1. The total vote ratio between those two candidates for the whole race (all ballots) is 3:1. These ALT ballots paint a much different picture. Why would these favor Upthegrove so much compared to the rest of the ballots?
I looked at the scheduled observers, and it appears that all of these dates and times were not covered by election observers from the Republican party. This is not the observer’s fault. It would be nice if the county could provide a schedule of when they will be processing these ballots ahead of time.
Day Before Certification
The most alarming part of what I notice is what happened on 8/19, the day before certification. There were 14 batches of ballots scanned on the 19th. It was a total of 1004 ballots scanned on that last day. That was 289 for Dave, and 100 for Sue.
Ten of those batches were scanned between noon and 4:25 pm. The other 4 were between 8:35pm and 8:42 pm.
Those last 344 ballots scanned after 8:35pm are alarming. Sure, people could have cured them between 4:25 and 8:35. But how did that happen? How did they receive these so late? Was the office even open for people to come in? Or was this Omni Ballot working its magic? In case you missed the Omni Ballot signature curing and online voting issues, check this out.
Cured Ballots
Another issue with these 344 late ballots is that when looking at the ballot status reports from the Secretary of State’s office between the 19th and the 20th, there are 214 people who went from rejected on the 19th to accepted on the 20th in King County.
The ballot status report is posted at the end of each business day, so roughly 4-5pm. Anyone who was accepted before that time should have been processed when they were processing ballots earlier that day. So, if there were 214 people who went from rejected to accepted after that time, why were there 344 ballots scanned later that night? Did these people really cure their ballots? Where are the others that aren’t accounted for in the ballot status report?
Of those late-night 344 ballots, Dave received 101 votes, and Sue received 36. After that, the margin of victory was reported to be 51 votes for Dave.
Additionally, King County delayed the canvassing board meeting to certify the election on the 20th, which made them the last county to chime in with the results for this race.
Bottom Line
Again, none of these things are proof of anything nefarious happening with the election. But when you add them all together, it’s difficult to blindly trust that nothing is possibly going on here.
Over the past several years we have been watching King County Elections. Time after time there is some kind of issue. They swap their servers in the middle of an election, they delete system logs before law permits, they work until midnight the day before certification deleting, rescanning, and re-adjudicating ballots without observers… The list goes on.
It’s starting to feel like they have no concerns about transparency or building voter trust. It’s always something with the elections in King County. I would love for the day to come when I know the election was secure because there are no gaping holes or hints of manipulation. King County is going to have to make some changes before that happens.
Room for Improvement
Some examples of things King County could do to close these gaps would be to post a schedule on their website of when they will be doing certain activities. If they are not able to stick to their schedule, they should give people at minimum a day’s notice for any changes.
It’s impossible to be there all the time, but people need to be included in certain events. Adjudication, ballot curing, and ALT ballots are all sensitive things that should be more transparent.
Precinct level results from King County are only posted once on election night, and once after certification. They do not update these on a daily basis like many other counties. This would not be difficult for the county to do; it’s just running a report. I’m sure they are busy, but this would allow people to better follow the results. The more data points, the better people can understand how we arrive at the certified numbers, which are far different than the election night numbers.
They should also plan ahead to get their work done without having to stay so late the day before certification. This is a pattern for them. Other counties don’t have this same issue.
Finally, response times to records requests should be brought back down to 5 days. If they cannot retrieve records within 5 business days, then they should hire an additional staff member to focus on fulfilling requests.
See For Yourself
I am providing the records provided by the county for anyone who wants to check my work. If you are not familiar with how to use these records, please let me remind you that you must combine the two and sort by time stamp. The batches weren’t necessarily scanned in numerical order. Feel free to reach out with any questions.
