Pierce County election chief: ‘It’s disaster preparedness, which is crazy for an election’

Pierce County Auditor Linda Farmer has spent the last year gearing up for Election Day.

"It's a full on emergency management," she said Tuesday morning. "It's disaster preparedness, which is crazy for an election."

The scene outside the Pierce County Annex on South 35th Street Tuesday almost seemed like a disaster scene with backed up traffic, long lines of people and police keeping order.

Inside the Election Center, workers were already counting ballots. Through Monday, 311,887 ballots had been received from the county's 576,189 active voters, Pierce County spokesperson Derrick Nunnally said.

The process is complicated — but only because it has numerous built-in checks and safeguards watched over by outside observers. If Farmer could sum it up in one sentence it might read like this: Your vote is going to be counted, and illegal votes won't be.

On Tuesday morning, Farmer took a few minutes from her busy day to show a News Tribune reporter the process. First, the reporter was taken to a kiosk where he entered identification and had his photograph taken. A dated, temporary visitor photo badge was immediately issued.

After accessing a locked door, Farmer and Nunnally explained how it all works.

Ballot drop boxes

The 51 ballot drop boxes across Pierce County range from 600 to 1,200 pounds, Farmer said.

"I really want to assure people that the boxes are literally steel tanks, and they are very secure," she said.

A narrow slit allows only a ballot to enter. There's very little oxygen inside the box and they contain dual fire-suppression systems. Unlike the Vancouver box which saw multiple ballots destroyed Oct. 28, the box in Oregon's Multnomah County had only three ballots slightly damaged.

It, says Farmer, was made by the same Puyallup company, Laserfab , that built Pierce County's.

Paid staff from the Auditor's Office are at all the drop boxes on Tuesday to assist voters and collect ballots. During an election, staff swells to around 300 people, Farmer said.

"All our workers are background checked, paid workers," she said. "We do not have volunteers."

Ballots can be dropped off until 8 p.m. Tuesday. Workers will continue to accept ballots from people in line before the 8 p.m. cut off.

"We're expecting that we might have a line out to I-5 here at the annex," Farmer said.

The ballots arrive

From ballot collection through the final count, everything human touched is conducted by two-person teams, Farmer said. Workers sign oaths to conduct the election accurately and fairly.

Once the ballots arrive at the Election Center, they are placed in red boxes.

Each ballot-containing envelope is weighed to make sure it corresponds to a set measurement.

"Sometimes people will fold (the ballot) up and it'll be lumpy, and it'll kick that out," Farmer said. "If somebody puts the ballot instruction sheet in there, it kicks it out."

Each rejected envelope is inspected by staff, she said. The goal is to keep any foreign objects, a mysterious white powder for instance, from entering the system.

The envelopes are then placed in yellow boxes.

Non-citizen voting

Only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote . A contention of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is that enough non-citizens are voting in the 2024 election to affect its outcome. There is no evidence to support that claim.

Non-citizen voting, Farmer reminds, is a felony. Perpetrators could be sentenced to prison if found guilty.

Voters are registered by the last four digits of their Social Security number or their state-issued identification cards. Farmer admits those cards can be obtained by non-citizens.

"It is possible, and I can't say that we don't have non-citizens on our rolls," Farmer said. "Most likely, accidentally. The most common call we get is, 'oOh, my gosh, I got a ballot. Please take me off your rolls.'"

Non-citizens are aware of prison time and fines for voting, she said.

"And it will probably jeopardize their path to citizenship in the future," Farmer added.

Voter fraud does occur every election, but it's usually conducted from within a family unit. A husband who fills out his recently deceased wife's ballot and signs her name to it, for instance, or a parent filling out a ballot for their child who is at college.

"We see issues of that every single election," Farmer said. "Not many. Most people want to do the right thing, and they just don't understand how their well meaning intentions can be nefarious."

The problem is minor, she said, and nothing like the claims of stolen elections made by certain political groups and interests.

"What's being described out there is not happening," she said.

Signature check

A major aspect of ballot integrity rests on the signature check. Like banks, credit unions and other financial systems, Pierce County uses a computerized signature scanner to compare the signature on a ballot envelope with that on file.

The machine, Farmer said, approves only about 60 percent of signatures. The rest are hand checked by employees who have been trained by the Washington State Patrol.

Once a signature has been verified, the envelopes are sent through another sorter that removes the ballot.

Occasionally, a ballot will come in too mangled to be read by the scanning machines.

"If it's not scannable, they will set it aside, and that ballot will be remade by a team of two and then checked by a team of two," Farmer said.

At this point, ballots are placed in green boxes.

Both Democrat and Republican party observers are on hand to watch the process, Farmer said.

"I am so incredibly proud of the relationships that we've built with both our political parties and the League of Women Voters who represent the independent vote," she said.

"We invite everybody to come in, anybody who has questions, we're going to show them exactly what we're doing," Farmer said.

Everything with the process is conducted within full view of all observers and anybody else who happens to be standing on the other side of the center's observation glass. Video cameras record from numerous angles.

Observers go through a training process that allows them to watch from the floor as ballots are processed and counted. Untrained observers stay behind glass.

Counting the votes

Machine scanners tabulate the results from each ballot.

When a bubble has not been completely filled or is otherwise questionable, a team of two people will inspect the ballot and try to determine the intention of the voter. Once that's been done, a different team of two people will check their work

The teams are switched up frequently to prevent even the hint of collusion, Farmer said. With 300 people on staff, it would be nearly impossible for any two people to try to influence an election by changing the occasional hard-to-read ballot.

Ballots and envelopes are then put into separate, secure storage areas.

Farmer expects the full count to be completed by Friday.

People can track their vote at voter.votewa.gov/portal2023/login.aspx . Voters statewide can sign up for text message notification of their ballot's status.

A ballot mailed or dropped off on Election Day will probably show up in the system anywhere from Wednesday to Friday, she said.