[EL] Just for fun

Fri Mar 30 18:40:22 PDT 2012

The first provision is designed to prevent provisional ballots from being commingled with regular ballots and tabulated before they are validated.  (Awkward language, admittedly, and hopefully they are at some level capable of being tabulated by a "voting system" at some point if validated).

The second one actually addresses an issue that happens:  when two or more voters decide to return their ballots in a single envelope (to save postage, etc.)  People do crazy things and maybe that's an effort at fraud, but I'm more than a little skeptical as it would be a particularly stupid/obvious way to go about it.  More likely, it's an attempt to do something environmentally friendly or to save postage without thinking about the voter-specific affirmations that are required on the outside of the return envelope.   Even if there is a signature on the outside of the envelope, there's no way to determine which ballot corresponds to the voter who signed and which corresponds to the voter who failed to sign.  As a result, neither can be counted.

Kevin

Kevin J. Hamilton | Perkins Coie LLP
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From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Lori Minnite
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2012 2:22 PM
To: law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: [EL] Just for fun

Voters who vote at the polls and fail to present valid ID in Washington State may vote a provisional ballot.  In trying to figure out whether they must do anything else - sign an affidavit, for example - before they have the honor of voting a provisional ballot, I came across this rule:
RCW 29A.36.115
Provisional ballots.

All provisional ballots must be visually distinguishable from other ballots and incapable of being tabulated by a voting system.

[2011 c 10 § 31; 2005 c 243 § 3.]

(It's the "incapable of being tabulated by a voting system" that has me chuckling).  At the same time, Washington is to be commended for being on the look-out for voter fraud:

RCW 29A.60.040
Rejection of ballots or parts - Write-in votes.

A ballot is invalid and no votes on that ballot may be counted if it is found folded together with another ballot.

Lori Minnite

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