US primary ballot design sparks vote tossing conspiracy theories
- Published on February 29, 2024 at 22:04
- 6 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"Got our voters' pamphlets," a woman says in a video posted February 23, 2024 to TikTok. "Now you check on the outside of your pamphlet what party you're affiliated with. I mean, I guess that just makes it easier for them to toss away the red ones."
As she speaks, the woman holds up what appears to be her husband's ballot for the March 12 presidential primary in Washington's King County, pointing to instructions on the outside of the envelope that say: "Mark one party declaration box."
The video spread across X and other platforms, with one widespread post claiming unnamed actors were "setting the stage for the most rigged election in American history" in November 2024.
"Plotting to throw away the red ballots," claims a top post on "The Donald," a far-right forum that was instrumental to the organization of the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
X owner Elon Musk also amplified the same narrative, responding "What!?" to a February 22 post sharing a picture of the ballot envelope and claiming the design was new.
But such claims about the party affiliation labels being used to illegally toss out Republican ballots are not backed by evidence.
The requirement is neither new nor nefarious, and it only comes into play for the state's presidential primary, according to AFP's interviews with experts and current and former elections officials.
"This isn't great design, but it's also emphatically not part of a conspiracy," said Loyola Marymount University law professor Justin Levitt, who previously served as President Joe Biden's first senior policy advisor for democracy and voting rights. "And none of this will happen in the general election, when party preference has zero connection to eligibility for any race."
Washington's presidential primary
Election administration varies by state in the United States.
Washington conducts voting entirely by mail, sending a ballot to every registered voter. But unlike some other jurisdictions, the northwest state also does not register voters by party.
Voters are not allowed to participate in the presidential nomination contest for more than one party, so those in Washington are asked to check a box on the outside of their primary ballot envelope to declare which process they wish to join. The requirement comes from the parties, who submit the language to be used beside the boxes, according to the Washington secretary of state's website (archived here and here).
Levitt said the requirement honors the national Republican Party's stipulation that eligible voters can only participate in a GOP primary if they are "deemed as a matter of public record to be Republicans pursuant to state law or, if voters are not enrolled by party, by Republican Party Rules of a state" (archived here).
A spokesperson for Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, told AFP: "The Presidential Primary is conducted to help major political parties select their nominees to appear on the November General Election ballot, and each party requires voters to state a party declaration to have their vote counted toward the party's results."
Hobbs's office said party declarations "have been on the backs of ballot return envelopes for the presidential primary since Washington adopted all-mail elections more than a decade ago."
Washington experimented for some years with a flap that covered the checkboxes, said former secretary of state Kim Wyman, a Republican who oversaw the 2020 election Biden won over Donald Trump. But the state later got rid of that setup due to the costs.
The existing design also cuts down on processing time, allowing votes to be easily sorted so each party's results can be counted separately, Wyman, now a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said.
The same ballots were used in King County for the 2020 primaries, undercutting the viral TikTok video's claim the question is new, said Halei Watkins, communications manager for King County Elections.
"Because this happens every four years, voters don't always recall that they have actually encountered a ballot like this before," Watkins said.
No impact on the general election
The positioning of the checkboxes on the ballot envelope's exterior has been criticized by some Republicans, but the secrecy of the vote cast on the inside of the ballot is maintained throughout the process, experts and elections officials said.
Each person's party declaration is also removed from public records 60 days after the primary results are certified, the state says -- and despite the rumors swirling online, such selections will not impact voting in November's general election, which could pit Trump against Biden.
"You'd never see any sort of party designation on the outside of a ballot envelope in a general election," Levitt said.
He said the primary ballot design "isn't nefarious," adding that it would not make sense for theoretical bad actors to single out and discard one side's ballots in a primary election.
Watkins agreed: "Throwing out ballots from one party versus another makes little to no sense, even in the election conspiracy space. Both parties will ultimately divide their delegates and nominate a candidate regardless of how many people voted for each party in the primary."
Security measures
Ballots are also safeguarded throughout the process.
"King County Elections has stringent chain-of-custody procedures, including tracking ballot collection teams in real-time while they're out in the field emptying drop boxes," Watkins said. "Voted ballots are never with a single person, but always with at least a team of two."
Watkins said voters in her county can track their ballots online or sign up for alerts to know when their ballot has been received. The county publishes broader ballot return statistics on its website.
Ballot processing is also open to party observers, as state law requires, and streamed live online (archived here).
Other counties in the state, where fraud is rare, have similar protections and tracking measures.
Tampering with a ballot or disenfranchising an eligible voter is a felony in Washington, and secretary of state Hobbs's office said it will also be reporting potential election mail crimes to the US Postal Inspection Service, the mail agency's law enforcement arm.
Marti Johnson, the US Postal Service's public relations representative for election mail, said its inspection service is working to protect its employees, distribution network and infrastructure, actively identify efforts to compromise the mail system and investigate election crimes.
AFP has debunked similar allegations of wrongdoing by election officials and mail carriers in past US elections. Watkins said such narratives are "disheartening and devastating" given the oath election administrators pledge toward accuracy.
"Election administrators are not a group of shadowy figures, but simply folks from the community who have chosen public service," she said.
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