Voters may be able to track mail ballots online

Voters in King County would be able to track the handling of their mail ballots over the Internet under a plan approved Monday by the County Council.

The council unanimously endorsed a proposal by County Executive Ron Sims to spend $1.3 million in federal aid to buy ballot-tracking equipment and software from Pitney Bowes. The technology should allow voters to determine online when a ballot is mailed to them by the county elections department, when the department receives the returned, completed ballot and when the signature on the ballot envelope is verified by the department as matching the signature on a registration.

The county hopes to include online ballot tracking as part of a rollout of all-mail voting in 2008. The council has approved the move to all-mail voting from the current, dual system of mail and poll voting, but the timing of the changeover depends on the availability of other equipment.

The county hopes to provide online information on a fourth step in the ballot-handling process -- when the ballot is removed from the envelope and readied for tabulation -- but that feature is not offered by the Pitney Bowes technology. Sims proposed spending $300,000 in federal aid on software from VoteHere of Bellevue, but that idea limped through a council committee Monday morning and then got knocked down in the full council in the afternoon.

The felling blow came when voting-rights activist Jason Osgood told the council that it appeared VoteHere had gone out of business or been sold. When quizzed about that by council members, elections department staffers said that, indeed, the company had been sold.

Council members were upset they hadn't been told before they considered the Sims proposal. "I think you misjudged badly on that," Bob Ferguson, D-Seattle, told elections director Sherril Huff.

And Reagan Dunn, R-Bellevue, said: "There has been so much done to improve ... elections. We are making progress, but this doesn't look good."

The council already had concerns about the VoteHere element because council consultants have said the county could develop equivalent software for no more than $25,000. But the elections department prefers the VoteHere package, and a council committee sent that plan to the full council Monday morning without a recommendation for approval.

The issue could come before the council again if the elections department provides information on the VoteHere product under new ownership.