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What counts as a vote in elections?

Voter Intent manual guides election worker decisions in Whatcom County

"Voter Intent" booklets with guidelines that include instructions for interpreting different types of marks on ballots are shown at the King County election headquarters in Renton in October 2020. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)
By Isaac Stone Simonelli Enterprise/Investigations Reporter

This election reporting is provided free to all readers as a public service by your locally owned Cascadia Daily News. Thanks for supporting truly local news by donating to CDN or subscribing here.


Editor’s Note: This story is part of Cascadia Daily News’ mini-series “pre-bunking” misinformation and disinformation ahead of the 2024 election. The series will continue to explore the democratic process in Whatcom County.

When Whatcom County residents cast their ballots, they want their vote to count. And, election officials want to make sure each vote is counted correctly.

But what counts as a vote on a ballot in Washington? Is a dark coffee stain going to cause your vote to be counted incorrectly? What about if you check a box or put a cross in it or don’t fill it in all the way? What if a stray mark enters a bubble of a candidate you don’t want to vote for, or you use an odd-colored pen?

Election officials have answers to each of these questions and a myriad of similar concerns. They rely on the “Voter Intent: Statewide Standards on What is a Vote” manual, put out by the Washington Secretary of State. 

The manual, which provides illustrated examples of ballots and how they should be interpreted, guides election workers’ decisions about voter intent. This is important because Washington is known as a “voter intent” state, which means that even if a voter doesn’t mark the ballot as directed, the intent of their vote must be counted, according to the Office of Secretary of State.

The first step in ensuring ballots with unusual marks are handled properly is the Opening Board. This two-person team of election workers remove ballots from the secrecy envelopes. If they spot a stray or unusual mark, they flag the ballot to ensure it’s reviewed by a two-person adjudication team.

Throughout many steps in the process, from picking up ballots to reviewing them, election workers are teamed up, explained Whatcom County Auditor Stacy Henthorn, noting that it’s just one more layer of redundancy built into the system.

All paper ballots — flagged or not — are then scanned into the election system and run through the tabulator. 

The tabulation system divides candidates’ bubbles into four different categories: valid votes, overvote (when a voter chooses more than they are supposed to), undervote (when a voter does not make a selection) and candidate’s bubble (when they chose someone else).


The vast majority of these ballots zip through the system without a hitch: the voter’s intent is clear to the tabulator. However, there are still many that it flags for review by the adjudication team.

The system leaves no room for election worker interpretation, said Whatcom County Chief Deputy Auditor Amy Grasher.

“If I can’t find a picture or anything in that guide, then we send it to the Canvassing Board,” explained Grasher, who was the elections supervisor for the previous 12 years. “We do not spend time discussing our feelings and what we think the voter intends, because it’s a rabbit hole and we are not the final say.”

The most fundamental rule when determining voter intent is that any mark made in the bubble — the “target area” — should be counted as a vote, according to the manual. The rest of the booklet mostly covers exceptions to this rule and how to interpret voter corrections accurately.

“They are looking for the exceptions to these rules,” Grasher said.

There are four primary exceptions: obvious stray marks, hesitation marks, parts of written notes and corrected votes.

For example, a ballot pulled up on the big screen by a member of the adjudication team might show a number of candidates whose names and bubbles were crossed out, while one bubble was filled out properly. Instead of counting this as an overvote — an instance where a voter chose more options than allowed — the team will be able to check the voter intent guide, find the relevant example and confirm the vote.

In this way, the election team ensures the voter’s intent. The decisions made by the two-person adjudication team are logged with the ballot and reviewed by a second two-person team, Henthorn said.

The key in the example above is that marks exist within the target area. In accordance with the guide, only circling a candidate’s name, underlining the name or circling the bubble — avoiding a mark within the target area — results in an uncounted vote.

Numerous sections in the guide cover patterns of similar marks, corrected votes, not a correction, identifying marks, write-ins and messy marks.

While there are more than 200 illustrated examples of ballot marks, Grasher said there is no way for the publication to reflect all possible circumstances that arise. 

For any situation not covered in the manual, by state law or administrative rule, the county canvassing board determines the voter’s intent.

“Typically, the ones that go to canvassing board is when the voter has marked a circle in between two candidates,” Henthorn said.

Isaac Stone Simonelli is CDN’s enterprise/investigations reporter; reach him at isaacsimonelli@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 127.

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