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Washington County elections staff defend processes after May primary, report turnout and costs
Summary
Elections staff told the County Commission they certified the May 19 primary, described ballot design, testing and adjudication procedures, and reported roughly 154,000 ballots cast (38.5% turnout) and an estimated $525,000 cost; commissioners pressed staff on voter-roll maintenance, signature challenges, and privacy safeguards.
Washington County Elections Division staff presented a detailed recap of the May 19, 2026 primary at the Board’s June 23 work session, laying out the office’s workflow, testing and verification steps, turnout and cost figures, and voter-engagement tools.
"We certified the election on Friday, June 12," the Elections Division reported, and staff described a multi-step administration process that starts more than two months before election day and includes candidate and measure filing, ballot design and proofing, exhaustive logic-and-accuracy testing, and two public tests of tabulation equipment. Staff said the office used a 32,000-ballot test deck on each of six tabulation scanners—about 192,000 test ballots scanned in total—to validate tallying systems.
Staff reported roughly 154,000 ballots were cast in the primary (about 38.5% turnout) and provided an estimated total cost around $525,000 (approximately $1.31 per registered voter and $3.41 per ballot cast); they said cost accounting is still being finalized pending invoices. The office said it handled about 2,400 challenged ballots for signature mismatch and about 500 for missing signatures; of those challenges, 1,327 were cured by the voter cure deadline.
The Elections Division walked the board through safeguards: each ballot envelope bears a unique ballot identification barcode (used to ensure only the active ballot is counted), signature verification on every envelope, bipartisan adjudication teams that review overvotes and ambiguous marks, and procedures to preserve ballot secrecy when opening and tabulating ballots. Staff emphasized that no unique identifier exists on the physical ballot that would tie it back to an individual voter.
Staff described voter-facing services that are intended to improve participation and transparency: BallotTracks (a tracking and notification service with close to 60,000 users after adding about 2,100 in this election) and Votes, a mobile voting platform available to UOCAVA voters. The office also described outreach efforts and bilingual staffing for tours and demonstrations.
Commissioners pressed staff on how the county identifies out-of-state voters (the office uses USPS national change-of-address data, ERIC partnership data sharing and undeliverable mail returns), the process for curing challenged signatures (voters have up to 21 days after election day to submit required affidavits or registration updates), and the rules that trigger inactivation or cancellation from voter rolls (failure to vote in two general-election federal cycles leads to cancellation under the discussed process). Board members also questioned privacy protections tied to mailing-house processes and unique identifiers; staff said mailing-house matching data are destroyed after the mailing job and that identifiers are on envelopes only, not on the physical ballots that are scanned.
On legal issues, staff briefed commissioners on a pending U.S. Supreme Court consideration of state postmark rules and on the proposed federal SAVE Act (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act). Staff said the county would follow any resulting law and consult county counsel and the Secretary of State as necessary.
The presentation concluded with staff saying the process is bipartisan, law-guided and subject to multiple double-checks. Commissioners generally thanked staff and followed with detailed questions about implementation and outreach.
