BY Andrew Weeks
Thousands of ballots in next week’s general election in Clallam County are being held up because they were returned in the mail or the voter failed to sign the ballot correctly, County Auditor Cathleen McKeown said Tuesday.
In all, about 3,200 unopened or questionable ballots have been returned to McKeown’s office in the Clallam County Courthouse in Port Angeles since Oct. 19.
Of that number, 798 have been remailed to voters using corrected addresses.
That’s out of a total 43,918 ballots sent out to registered voters in the county.
As of Tuesday, a total of 10,835, representing 24.67 percent, of ballots have been returned to the Auditor’s Office.
McKeown said the reasons for the ballot limbo on nearly a third of them include signatures on returned ballots that don’t match what is on voter registration cards, signatures that were printed by the voter instead of signed, and ballots that were sent to the wrong address.
“We’ve always had problems every election, but this year there’s a pretty large number [of ballot problems],” McKeown said.
“We have three people who have been working full-time just trying to [correct the problems], but it takes a lot of time and gets expensive.
“And we just don’t have the budget to hire more people.”
To contact the election office about ballots or address changes, call McKeown at 360-417-2222 or Julie Ridgway at 360-417-2221.
