King County Elections certified the 2008 presidential election Wednesday, counting more than 930,000 ballots. Turnout in the historic November election exceeded the turnout of any other election in recent memory with 84 percent of voters participating. Certified results are now available online.
Election results summary:
• 647,907 total absentee ballots
• 282,131 total poll ballots (includes 27,466 provisional ballots)
• 930,038 total ballots cast (out of 1,108,128 registered voters)
Staff reports to the Canvassing Board demonstrated continued improvements by elections officials in such areas as inventory reconciliation of ballots received and counted, and voters credited with voting. Using Six Sigma quality standards, the Elections Divisions’ reconciliation reports balanced with 22 inventory discrepancies, a fraction of what this number was in 2004 before elections office reforms.
“The work for this election begun four years ago and our ability to reconcile within 22 for the largest election in recent memory is the result of the commitment and hard work of staff,” said Sherril Huff, director of Elections. “I want to commend staff for their exceptional dedication and the long hours they worked to achieve the great success of this election.”
King County’s post-election audits found a perfect match between the electronic vote totals and paper results for the accessible voting units used at poll voting locations. The audit was conducted on 4 percent of the accessible voting units used in the election. To date, all manual audits of King County’s accessible voting units have been 100 percent accurate since first introduced in May 2006. In addition, the random, manual audit done in three poll precincts matched the electronic results. Daily audits of the software performed throughout the 21 day certification period performed well, as did a post-election logic and accuracy test done today.
“Our democracy is only as strong as our participation in the process, and our faith in democracy can only be as strong as our trust in the sanctity of our elections,” said Council Clerk Anne Noris, the Council’s appointee to the Canvassing Board. “I was impressed by the hard work and commitment of the Elections Division to making sure every vote counts, and I am confident that this election was conducted fairly and that all votes were counted accurately.”
King County Elections is actively planning for all-mail voting in the Feb. 3, 2009 special election. Issues on the ballot will include the elected elections director, proposed Fall City Metropolitan Park District and five commissioner positions, and a capital levy for Enumclaw School District. The deadline to file resolutions is Dec. 12, 2008 for the February ballot.
