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Friday, November 3, 2006
How to make sure your late mail vote counts
OLYMPIA -- Mail voters who wait until the last minute to send in their ballot on Tuesday might want to go to an official election drop-off area instead of putting it in a streetside mailbox if they want to ensure it's counted, Secretary of State Sam Reed said Thursday.
Especially in areas where mail pickup is early, voters need to check to make sure that they haven't missed the last pickup, and not just toss the ballot in the first mailbox they see, Reed said.
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- "Ultimately, it's the voter's responsibility," he said.
Reed noted that each county is required to have places where voters can drop off their ballots until 8 p.m. on Election Day. They can also go to their post office Tuesday and ask that it be hand-stamped, he said.
Ernie Swanson, spokesman for the Seattle district of the U.S. Postal Service, said that even with the recent consolidation of some post offices in the state, as long as voters drop the ballot in the mailbox before the final pickup time, it will be postmarked that day.
"Simply pay attention to the collection time," he said. "That's the key element."
Earlier this year, the state gave counties a green light to switch to all-mail voting. Before the new law, 70 percent of the state's registered voters already cast their ballots by mail. But now, 34 of the state's 39 counties are officially vote by mail.
In September's primary, more than 90 percent of those who voted in Washington did so by mail. In the five counties that maintain polling sites -- King, Kittitas, Klickitat, Island and Pierce -- nearly 83 percent of those who voted did so by mail.
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