by Ruth Peterson
There has been a great deal of confusion over the past week about ballots and the terminology used when discussing ballot status. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with the Sec. of State’s office to get accurate information because of this confusion. Here is the bottom line.
The SOS’s office has a spreadsheet that tracks the status of every ballot in the state. Here is the link – https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/research/2020-general-election.aspx
The information is contained in spreadsheets that are difficult to navigate unless you like to deal with spreadsheets. Even then, it’s tedious.
There has been a website created (I do not know who created it) that takes the information from those SOS spreadsheets and changes into easily usable data. The website is https://votewashington.info/voter/wa. This is NOT an official SOS site, but it can certainly be used as a handy tool, especially for PCOs and others trying to get out the vote. The site breaks down the ballot returns by county and even precinct. PCOs (or anyone else) can go there and look up who of their friends hasn’t voted yet and give them a call. Just this morning, I found a friend whose ballot had been challenged because of a non-matching signature. He’s on his way to the courthouse right now to get that fixed, so his vote will count on Tuesday night.
The only official way to check your ballot is at votewa.gov. I encourage anyone who might see some information on the previous site that concerns them to look up their info on the official site, just to confirm. In my friend’s case, we found that his ballot was, indeed, challenged.
You may have seen articles and heard news stories about the above unofficial website. SOS Wyman was concerned about the site, because people thought it was an official site of the SOS. It also listed “rejected” ballots for each county. Because a ballot is not officially rejected until the canvassing board has made that official declaration, SOS Wyman was concerned about the use of the term “rejected”.
The above linked, unofficial website has made some changes that I think will clear up a lot of confusion. They have put a notice at the top of their website that tells people of the official SOS website, and they have changed the word “rejected” to “challenged.”
So why was the word “rejected” even used? I used that word when I talked about ballots in my previous email, as well. The problem is that the SOS’s spreadsheet uses the word. Votewa.gov used that word until recently. Both should have used the word challenged but they didn’t when this all started. They have changed the wording on the votewa.gov site, but not in the spreadsheets, so you will still see the term in that location. I’m sure they will change that before the next election!
One last note on this. Facebook has censored the use of this website. I try to never post anything that isn’t factual, but I had my posts about this website removed.
I hope this clears things up a bit. The official site is votewa.gov, but it will only show you one person at a time, and you have to have that person’s birthdate. You can also use the official spreadsheets at the link I give above. Or you can use the very easy Vote Washington site as a tool, understanding it isn’t an official SOS site. 😊 Whatever tools you use, please help to get the vote out!
