Jan. 7, 2005

King County updates voter registration file

Elections officials today released its updated voter registration file.

After recent allegations of people casting ballots under the names of dead voters, officials remind the public that the number of voters credited for voting could change slightly depending on this ongoing investigation. The number of ballots cast will not change.

“The process of crediting voters is a post-election administrative process, that has no bearing on the authenticity of the election results,” said Dean Logan, director of Records, Elections and Licensing Services.

Updates to the CD include additional registrations, cancellations, and changes to individual voter records. To prepare for the upcoming February election and as required by law, staff has been updating the voter registration database. This results in a noticeable difference between the file released Wednesday, Dec.29 and the updated file released today.

Using this data to compare precinct results in the General Election will not be accurate, as some voters’ precincts have changed due to list maintenance. It is important to note that voting history follows the voter and not the particular precinct or jurisdiction. When a voter moves from one address to another and transfers their voter registration, the voting history transfers with them to their new precinct.

Summary

The reconciliation work done this week reduced the difference between ballots cast and voters credited from 3,539 to 1,217. This number includes 348 provisional ballots mistakenly put through vote tabulation machines at polling places.

Through the reconciliation process, staff corrected and credited 1,654 voting records not credited in the preliminary file released last week.

Staff confirmed 69 Address Confidentiality Program voters cast ballots and 251 federal write-in absentee ballots were tabulated. These represent validly cast ballots, that are not accounted for in the registration database.

Given this work, staff can confirm that an additional 1,654 voters were credited for voting during the reconciliation process and 668 ballots were accounted for but not represented in the registration system.

The remaining difference in the number of votes cast versus the number of registrations credited with voting in the 2004 General Election is 1,217 – an accuracy rate of 99.99% based on close to 900,000 ballots cast.

This number is consistent with historic reconciliation rates for King County. In 2000 this number was 1,230.

Updated: Jan. 7, 2005

Links to external sites do not constitute endorsements by King County.
By visiting this and other King County web pages,
you expressly agree to be bound by terms and conditions of the site.
The details.