General election sees high ratios of ‘under votes’ in some returns

The Whitman County general election last week saw a high amount of votes in one category: under votes.

Under votes are logged when a voter fails to vote for a particular office or issue, according to the Washington Secretary of State office. This could be intentional or due to oversight.

On advisories, measures and candidates that were on the county-wide ballot, a total of 5,053 under votes were cast collectively – 2,309 of which belonged to Port Commissioner Tom Kammerzell, who also received 5,504 votes in his uncontested re-election. Additionally, there were 212 write-in votes for his position.

Kammerzell's under vote count totaling 29 percent of his vote, which came from a county-wide race, was the largest by number, but returns for other unopposed candidate had higher ratios.

Several uncontested hospital and school district candidates also saw high under vote rates, some as high as 41 percent, which went to Jeff Elbracht, who received 1,685 votes for Pullman's hospital district seat but had 1,184 under votes. His race, however, was not on the county-wide ballot, making for a smaller ratio.

“Typically if a candidate runs unopposed people won't vote,” said elections supervisor Debbie Hooper. “Sometimes it is because they don't like them or they just feel like it does not matter since they are going to win anyway.”

The contested Ninth District race between Pomeroy's Mary Dye and Pasco's Richard Lathim saw a 13 percent under vote rate. Dye ultimately garnered 4,583 votes to Lathim's 2,181 in Whitman County.

Under votes in Whitman County in the representative race were 1,052, and write-ins totaled 207.

Hooper added that in place of a write-in vote, some individuals wrote comments on the ballot about the candidates. She did not specify the nature of the comments.

“It would be informative to the candidates to see what people write on the line,” Hooper said. “It is healthy. It is like a report card to see what the opinion of the people is.”

Hooper also said that some people choose to write fictional characters in on the write-in line, such as Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse. She said she saw those two names a lot this election.

Hooper said the elections office is now trying to wrap everything up for this election. She said the staff is currently going through several Pullman ballots which had to be re-mailed to some voters because of a printer error. The staff is trying to make sure there are no duplicates in those ballots.

Approximately 500-600 ballots remain to be counted, Hooper said.

Hooper added that she was pleased that the hospital District Three race between Martin Marler and Sandra Brabb had a high return rate, as that ballot had to be mailed out separately from the regular ballot after it was left off the ballot.

“I was pleased the votes were just the same,” she said. “The turnout was right there even with the rest of the ballots.”

The total ballots cast were 8,026, making for 39 percent voter return of the 20,520 mailed out.