November 08, 2006
Why does counting take so long?

I am curious, maybe someone knows the answer.

How is it that Snohomish County can count 94,000+ ballots on election day and only about 6,000 ballots on the following day?

I noticed this during the primary too. As the daily reports came up on the States web page, SnoCo could only seem to count 8-10,000 ballots a day after election day.

Anyone know why there is such a drop off? It could be that they count the ballots before election day, but I thought that wasn't allowed under state law.

Posted by SouthernRoots at November 08, 2006 06:21 PM | Email This
Comments
1. It takes longer for King County to rifle through all of the ballots trying to come up with a way to create a win for Burner like they did with Gregoire in 2004.

Posted by: Jeff B. on November 8, 2006 08:01 PM
2. Whole states like Virginia (2.3 million votes cast) have reported their voting results and still King County grinds on.

Posted by: John425 on November 9, 2006 02:22 PM
3. John425,

I think Virginia is not a voter intent state like Washington. So if the ballots aren't accepted by the counting machines, too bad for the voter. In King Co, each problematic ballots gets duplicated. That's a huge effort. I'm not comfortable with it.

My ideal would be to continue being a voter intent state but to minimize mail balloting.

Cheers, Jason

Posted by: zappini on November 10, 2006 02:44 PM
4. After Election Day, a lot of what is counted are provisional ballots. They are ones where you already know that there is some sort of issue regarding the voter that needs some research to resolve. They take 10 times longer to process because you have to get to the bottom of the issue. The other thing being processed is absentees, which take a little longer than regular ballots too.

Posted by: krm on November 14, 2006 02:43 PM
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