Whether voters are just plain clueless, or whether they are rebelling against the relatively new "pick-a-party" ballots, one in ten voters in King County are not marking the oval indicating a party preference. The King County Journal reports that King County Elections officials discovered this while doing a sampling of the ballots that had already come in for the primary. Of course, those ballots will count for the non-partisan races such as judgeships, but not for the primary party races.

The paragraphs that caught my eye the most were:

1)

The problem was more pronounced in Snohomish County's primary, which is being conducted entirely by mail. Elections officials found that two out of 10 voters there didn't follow directions.

and

2)

Voters who already mailed in their ballots cannot get them back to fix, (Bobbi) Egan said. But voters who make this mistake at the polls in counties where they can vote in person will see their ballots spit out of the voting machine if they fail to mark a party."

Stefan has mentioned the point in paragraph two, as well as what's going on in Snohomish County. But now that we know King County is experiencing this problem for one out of ten ballots, that strongly argues against a move to force all KC voters to vote by mail.

And this hardly bolsters the argument given by the forced-mail-ballot-pushers that voter participation will increase. Quite the opposite.

Therefore, I add my voice to those calling KCE to stop rushing to force all voters to vote by mail while the system is set up this way. I personally do not object to marking a party preference, but if the problems with that are going to be of this magnitude, then KCE must continue to allow poll voting , which WILL eliminate this problem for those who vote in person.