SPOKANE, Wash. — Kootenai County ballot returns
Kootenai County has set a new record for most ballots returned in a single election with at least 87,000, according to county clerk Jim Brannon.
In Kootenai County, 87,000 ballots have been returned as of Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 6 p.m., according to the county clerk Jim Brannon.
Over 100,000 people are registered to vote in the county. As of Monday, voter turnout was at about 87 percent.
In Idaho's Primary Election in March, there were over 86,000 registered voters in Kootenai County. The county had a 25% voter turnout.
In the 2016 General Election, over 77,000 people were registered to vote and turnout was 87 percent.
Spokane County
Hundreds of thousands of voters in Spokane County have already returned their ballots for the 2020 General Election, while tens of thousands of Kootenai County residents have voted.
Just over 71 percent of ballots issued in Spokane County for the General Election have been returned as of Monday, Nov. 2, according to the Spokane County Auditor’s website. Out of 361,865 registered voters, 257,113 of those have sent in their ballots for counting.
“Voters are eager to return their ballots to us. Normally, today, we would have just finished the initial mailing to voters. Instead, we have received nearly the same number of ballots already as what we received the weekend before the Primary Election in August,” Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton said in a press release on Friday, Oct. 16.
According to Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, as of Tuesday, Oct. 27 more than 2.25 million votes have already been received. He said that is more than double the amount of votes that had been received at this same time in 2016.
Ballots in Spokane County are processed as they come in, according to Dalton. She said her staff sorts out ballots as they start returning and verify that the signature on the envelope matches the one on the voter's registration record.
"As soon as we do that and they match then we're able to open the envelopes, extract the ballots, make sure that there isn't any corrections or changes on that ballot and then they do go into the trays, and then we run them as quickly as possible through the tabulations machines," Dalton explained.
But, and Dalton stresses the importance of this, the votes aren't counted at this point. Rather, an image of each ballot is taken and stored until election night.
"We make images of those ballots, those images are stored, and we cannot actually hit the count button until 8 o'clock on election night," she said.
The process is spelled out in Washington state law. According to the NCSL, the Revised Code of Washington states "No person may divulge the results of the count prior to 8 p.m. on Election Day. A violation is a misdemeanor."
In the August 2020 Primary, voter turnout was nearly 51 percent, according to the Spokane County Auditor’s website. In August, 341,469 ballots were sent out, meaning nearly 17,000 people registered to vote since then.
In the November 2016 General Election, there were 306,261 ballots issued and 239,229 were returned. Voter turnout was 78 percent. By Oct. 21, 2016, only 1,724 ballots had been returned. It’s important to note that ballots were sent out a week early this year due to issues with the U.S. Postal Service.
Dalton said every registered voter should have received their ballot by Oct. 20. If voters have not received their ballots yet, they are encouraged to call the Spokane County Auditor’s Office for a replacement.
Voters can check the status of their ballot online.
CORRECTION: Earlier in October, this story linked to a site that the Washington Secretary of State said is not a "verifiable source of election information" and has been reported to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the center for Internet Security.
The KREM Voter Access Team is working to get you the information and dates you need for the 2020 Election. Click here to view the KREM Voter's Guide. Text the word 'Vote' to 509-448-2000 for important deadlines and information, or text 'Ballot' for links on how to check the status of your ballot in Washington and Idaho.
