Thurston County Auditor Mary Hall has a message for voters in Washington: There is no reason to vote late on Election Day, or wait until Election Day to turn ballots in, despite what some groups and candidates are saying.
Hall told McClatchy that election deniers and those who participated in the “Stop the Steal” campaigns after the 2020 election are responsible for perpetuating the myth that voting late and in-person on Election Day, or submitting a ballot on Election Day directly to an election office, is safer than dropping off a ballot at a dropbox or voting any other day or time.
“This theory that they have is really based on the lie that’s happening across the country,” Hall said. “If they vote late, their vote is not going to be in the first set of results. We have 21 days to process, so it’s just going to delay results. And if we have close races, that’s kind of torturous for candidates.”
Hall said she is concerned that too many voters will show up the night of the election to request new ballots. The Thurston County Auditor’s Office isn’t large enough to hold several voters who show up late, she said, which could lead to long lines.
She said she also worries about the treatment of staff at the facility if too many people show up at once or can’t get in line in time for the prompt 8 p.m. deadline.
Additionally, Hall pointed out that replacement ballots are no different from the ballots Washingtonians receive in their mail.
The groups pushing the false Election Day voting narrative are not alone in their efforts. Republican Joe Kent, a U.S. congressional candidate in Washington’s 3rd District, told attendees at a town hall earlier this week to hold onto their ballots until election day to avoid “funny business,” according to an article from KOIN.
“They would have the least amount of time to do said funny business if you turn in your ballot on game day,” Kent was quoted as saying. Kent previously encouraged the same strategy in the primaries.
Others have chimed in on the suggestion too.
Nancy D. Churchill is a writer, marketing consultant and a state committeewoman for the Ferry County Republican Party, according to her blog Dangerous Rhetoric. The website notes that it is a Conservative opinion blog on Washington state politics.
In the blog post called “Should we bring back Election Day?” Churchill also encouraged voters to hold ballots until Election Day before dropping them off at a ballot box or directly at an auditor’s office.
Churchill suggested in her article that “matchback lists are being used to calculate how many opposing votes would be needed to sway results in favor of a party or incumbent” and that “our dirty voter rolls are being used to manufacture just enough votes to narrowly win a ‘tight race.’”
She also compared voting to a coin toss experiment, and said that “it would be unlikely for the experiment to have a daily result of 2 to 1 — over and over — unless the coin was somehow weighted to usually land on one side. However, that’s what we see in the vote total charts — a proportion that stays the same from day to day.”
Neither Kent nor Churchill responded to a request for comment by McClatchy.
Hall told McClatchy that Churchill’s statements are “such a stretch.”
Voter rolls are clean, Hall assured, and said that matchbacks can simply be used by campaigns to see if likely voters have submitted their ballots. This can help campaigns send more targeted mailers to voters who have yet to submit a ballot, she said.
According to the secretary of state website, the matchback report, also known as the ballot status report, “contain ballots received, accepted, or challenged” and the results are posted every day two weeks ahead of the election. Those reports are posted until the election is certified.
“People can trust the election process, it’s done the same way all across the state and it’s a tried and true method that we have used for decades in Washington state,” Hall said. “It just amazes me that it is being questioned now. Who benefits when people don’t trust our democracy?”
Voters who are concerned with fraud should submit their ballot earlier rather than later, according to spokespeople for other election offices previously interviewed by McClatchy.
Washingtonians have until Nov. 8 to submit their ballots.
