Washington Election Office Orders Ballots Sorted by Length of Residence, Then by Alphabet, Then by Mood
State officials respond to a federal request by building a multi-stage screening line for every envelope, staffed by clerks from three ministries and a retired choir.
Washington State election officials have begun routing every mail ballot through a sorting line of 22 stations after federal prosecutors asked for suspected noncitizen ballots to be set apart. The line, installed in a former warehouse in Olympia, forces each envelope past a clerk who reads the voter's name aloud before deciding whether the paper may proceed.
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs' office said the process was designed to satisfy the Justice Department's demand without any single ballot being set aside by mistake. "We have chosen to verify the verifiers," a spokesperson said. "Every clerk now checks the work of the clerk before, and a third clerk checks the work of the first two. The envelopes are rested for 48 hours between stations so no one is rushed."
The 405 names on the federal list have been printed on laminated cards and posted at each station. Staff have been instructed to compare each arriving envelope against the cards, a process that by the second day had grown to require a second warehouse, a dedicated bus route and a training camp for 340 part-time reviewers recruited from local libraries.
Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd's office said it welcomed the measures, while noting that the 48-hour deadline expires Wednesday. Asked whether the new line would finish in time, a county supervisor replied that the line would finish when the last envelope had been read aloud twice, "which, at our current pace, is the next election."
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