After last November’s election I asked King County Elections for the list of challenged ballots. Ballots are challenged when either voters do not sign the outside envelope or their signature does not match their original voter registration card. King County Elections then sends notices to all, asking for some action to correct this.

Vashon and Maury Island had 127 challenged ballots, 66 unsigned envelopes and 61 whose signatures did not match.

After the election was validated, I again asked for the challenged ballot list. This time 51 ballots still had not been counted. We now had 22 ballots with missing signatures and 29 ballots with signatures not matching the ones on file. But in addition to these, King County added a category: ballots received too late. We had 57 ballots that were postmarked after Election Day. All in all there were 108 Islanders who took the time to cast their ballots last November only to be rejected.

So please remember to sign the outside envelope. If you think your signature has changed over the years, have two witnesses also sign the envelope as well. And if you are mailing your ballot at the last minute, go into the post office and have them put a metered stamp on it with the date.

Our ballots just arrived. Please vote and make your vote count.

— Hilary Emmer