Once again, it is election season in Washington State, and once again, there are more problems in King County. Now, many of the 2024 general election ballots will not scan properly. You would think this would have been thoroughly tested months ago in Washington State’s most populous county, but apparently not!
According to Republican election observers, many of the 2024 general election King County ballots have a shadow caused by the ballot fold when scanned. The ballot fold creates a shadow dark enough to oftentimes register a vote for a candidate different from whom the voted originally voted for.
The presidential race is one of the most affected races. During the ballot review processing a very high percentage of ballots were clearly marked for Donald J. Trump / JD Vance or Kamala D. Harris / Tim Walz. However, because of the shadow problem, the scanner recorded the votes for Claudia De la Cruz (Socialist) and/or Rachele Fruit (Socialist) – causing an overvote in the Clear Ballot system. These have to be corrected by ballot review and adjudication teams.
The false votes being recorded because of the fold shadows are showing up during batch review as "low confidence" votes and seem easy to identify. But we don't know how many, if any, are dark enough to not show up as a "low confidence" vote. If the race near the shadow was voted, then the shadow will trigger an "overvote" and, therefore, trigger a review.
Of more concern is that if the voter did not vote in the race, it could trigger a vote for one of the candidates that was not voted by the voter, and if dark enough (because of the shadow) it would not show as a "low confidence" vote, and therefore, a vote would be registered that never happened.
King County Elections is trying to figure out a workaround. Workers were seen attempting a fix to “flatten” out the ballots, but it takes well over an hour to “flatten” a batch of 250 ballots one by one. Obviously, this is a massive problem with nearly 1.4 million registered voters in King County.
According to one Republican Election Observer, “When I started observing at King County Elections, they were giving the Envelope Opening Department a mini training on "back folding" the ballots before submitting them for scanning in an effort to flatten them out.”
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