Pepper Fisher

OLYMPIA — Washington’s Secretary of State Kim Wyman issued an emergency rule change Wednesday that requires county officials to use First Class mail when sending ballot packets to voters beginning at least 15 days before Election Day.

By law, ballots have to arrive in every voter’s mailbox no later than Oct. 16. That’s a little under 3 weeks before the November 3 election. The ballots are mailed to us using the standard bulk rate, which takes anywhere from 3 to 10 days.

Under today’s new rule, all subsequent ballot mailings, like replacement ballots or ballots for newly registered voters, would be mailed via First Class at least 15 days prior to the election. Ballots sent using the First-Class rate have a delivery window between two and five days. Some counties in Washington already do that, but not all.

We asked Interim Elections Manager Damon Townsend if the new rule changes how Clallam County does things.

“Just because of the size of our county we’ve always done our subsequent mailings, those mailings after the first big mailing, using first-class mail. This would affect more like a King or a Pierce or a Snohomish-size of county where they might have a couple thousand ballots going out the next day or the day after that, and they no longer can use that bulk mail, but they’ll be using first-class like we do.”

We asked Townsend to weigh in on the national conversation about whether mail-in ballots are a secure way to hold an election and assure that every vote is counted on time.

“Well, in my opinion, in Washington state, we’ve been doing vote-by-mail for nearly 20 years, and during that time we’ve developed good relationships with the post office. We actually have a conference call every day during the election period with the postal authorities to make sure our mail’s going through, we bring up little issues with them. And so we’ve got it dialed in here. I’m not scared about Washington state. I cannot speak for some other states, but here we’ve got nothing to worry about. We’ve been doing it for years.”

The United States Postal Service recommends voters return their ballots by mail a week before Election Day. Return envelopes included in your ballot packet come with prepaid First-Class postage.

Voters should check their mailbox collection times if they’re mailing within a week before Election Day, or use one of the 9 ballot drop boxes located throughout the county. Drop boxes are open until 8 pm November 3.

It’s also a good idea to visit VoteWA.gov before Oct. 26 to make sure your voter registration record is up to date or to register to vote. People may also register by visiting your county elections office.