by Jeanne Crevier, LWV Snohomish County
Originally published in LWV Snohomish County's December 2022 edition of "The Voter"
A good project offers three things: an objective that achieves a vision, clear direction, and focused action within a manageable timeframe.
Emma White, the Elections and Voting Outreach Specialist from the Auditor’s office provided the League with a really good project when she asked if we wanted to help “cure” ballots. And many of you enthusiastically responded to this opportunity!
Curing ballots involves contacting the voters whose ballot signatures could not be verified, making their votes not count until verification is received. After attempting to process these ballots, the Auditor’s office sends a Signature Resolution form, then tries to contact the voter by phone or email, depending on the contact methods given on the ballot envelope by the voter, to urge them to complete the Resolution form.
The pilot program that Emma devised sends a postcard to the voters with missing or mismatched signatures, to remind them again to validate their signatures on the Resolution form. Our League volunteers found a list of thirty names and corresponding address labels and instructions with a script inside a packet. Several of you took more than one packet to get as many postcards out as possible by the end of the business day on November 22nd.
And your efforts were amazing! It’s too soon to know the measurable effect of the postcard as of this writing – that is, how many signature challenges were resolved after the postcards were sent – but you certainly worked hard at making all votes count when you sent 3,475 postcards to the more than 4,300 voters with signature challenges. That’s over 79%!
The longer-term action for the League is to incorporate the importance of having a valid signature into our voter education. Let’s find ways to emphasize this lesson.
Thanks so much for all that you did, and the Snohomish County Auditor’s office is equally grateful. When we get the official results, they will be posted on the website. Way to actively participate in your democracy there, League members!
