KING COUNTY, Wash. — King County election workers are back at the Renton headquarters for another long day as the ballots are still pouring in.
More than one million votes were cast for national and local races, which is actually less than what the county election officials projected.
Just because Election Day is over and many races have been called in Washington, doesn’t mean ballot counting in King County has stopped.
In fact, King County Elections Chief of Staff Kendall Hodson tells us election workers have around 300,000 more votes to get through.
“In a lot of ways Wednesday, the day after the election, is the busiest for ballot processing for us,” Hodson said.
Everyone was back in their assigned spots at Headquarters by 6 a.m., ready for another day of counting.
“We will absolutely be here all day,” Hodson said. “We started at six this morning, they will be here until midnight scanning ballots in and scanning them into the tabulation system.”
Not only are they putting the last ballots through the counting process, but they also need to deal with the ineligible votes not been counted yet.
“We have thousands of folks who forgot to sign their ballot, or their signature doesn’t match the one we have on file. We will reach out to them by phone, email, or even send mail,” Hodson said.
Even with mail-in ballots still tricking in, Hodson tells us the voter turnout wasn’t what they hoped for in Seattle’s most populated county.
“So far we are at about 77 percent, that is my best estimate,” Hodson said. “But that’s super rough, it might climb from there, there’s still a long way to go.”
Many races have been called, but nothing is legally over until the November 26th certification date.
“From our perspective our election isn’t over until certification, there’s lots of races on this ballot and votes still to be counted,” Hodson said.