King County Elections oversees and administers every initiative, measure, and race for political office for the citizens of the county. To make sure that democracy functions fairly and transparently, King County Elections must accurately issue, process, and count ballots for all eligible citizens. This is a complex process that requires strict controls to make sure that all ballots are counted correctly and that citizens can trust King County Elections to administer elections fairly. For this audit, we conducted in-depth observations of the 2017 general election, analyzed voting and census data, and interviewed many staff at all levels of King County Elections to determine whether controls over ballot processing were sufficient.

King County Elections (KCE) has a strong culture of accountability and uses many procedures to protect the integrity of the election process. While we found areas for improvement, county voters can be confident that KCE administers elections fairly and accurately.

KCE does not have a comprehensive risk management strategy that would allow it to better identify and prioritize risks to the election process. While we did not find any evidence of fraud or mishandling of ballots, we did find some gaps in the procedures meant to protect ballots from being lost or modified during processing. New technology has made processing ballots more efficient, but has also created new risks for ballot alteration when KCE staff review scanned votes on a computer.

To increase access for military and overseas voters, KCE allows voters to return ballots by email, but this option carries its own risks. There are no protections to prevent emailed ballots from being deleted, and emailed ballots are not as secret as regular ballots. Despite KCE’s voter engagement efforts, we also found evidence of barriers to voting among communities of color and limited English speaking communities.

We recommend that KCE develop a comprehensive risk management strategy to address vulnerabilities to ballot loss and alteration. We also recommend uncounted ballot envelopes always be in the custody of more than one person, as well as that KCE strengthen controls that prevent staff from writing on ballots or changing votes by themselves. We further recommend that KCE create protections for the integrity and secrecy of emailed ballots. Finally, we recommend that KCE use voter engagement data to determine how to target voter engagement funds and take steps to reduce barriers for voters who access their ballot online.

Currently, there are no related reports to this project.