Whitman auditor says new system should make count smoother

The Whitman County Auditor’s Office is hoping that joining a new, statewide voter registration system, VoteWA, will make it easier to track ballots and correct errors.

Auditor Sandy Jamison said the purpose of VoteWA is to integrate all 39 Washington counties into one software platform for elections and voter registration.

This will allow staff to track ballots through every county. For example, Jamison said, the system can track when a voter moves from Yakima to Pullman. If that happens, the new system should ensure that voter gets their correct Whitman County ballot and invalidate the ballot they received in Yakima, so only one ballot is counted.

“Ideally, it is much easier to track because we aren’t calling around to different counties and trying to invalidate one ballot,” she said. “It does it for you.”

VoteWA has also alerted Jamison’s staff to possible precinct errors.

She said the county’s old registration database did not track whether the boundaries of a voting precinct changed. VoteWA does track these changes and Jamison said her staff found about 100 errors where the precinct boundaries in their old system were incorrect.

She said this does not cause any issues for the Pullman voters as they are still in the same ward district.

Before VoteWA, Whitman County relied on a system that only a handful of their Washington counties used. She said while no system is perfect, VoteWA, should help the county keep accurate voter registration records.

“It’s been challenging and we put in an awful lot of hours to manually look at number of (voter) addresses to make sure they’re correct in the system, but I feel confident the numbers are going to be solid,” she said.

Jamison urged voters to mail in their ballots sooner than later as it makes Election Day go much smoother for her staff.

“The sooner they get their ballots in, the sooner we can report final numbers,” she said.

With Washington now allowing same-day registration, voters can now register to vote on Election Day if they choose, and can do so at the Elections Center in Colfax. Voters can still currently register at VoteWA.gov.

Anthony Kuipers can be reached at (208) 883-4640, or by email to akuipers@dnews.com.