Island County residents who did not properly follow directions when filling out their general election mail-in ballots may find that some of their votes were nullified.

Emergency Washington Administrative Code rules were put in place this year just as the county was sending out absentee ballots. Each box on the ballot was to be filled in solid.

“We didn’t really have a chance to educate the public as much as we would have liked,” said Island County Auditor Suzanne Sinclair, who ran unopposed in the election.

Although the reasoning was sound, the outcome may not be exactly what the Secretary of State’s Office had in mind.

“Their goal, which is laudable, is to create consistency across the state in how canvassing boards treat markings,” Sinclair said. “As soon as you get human beings together, you get different interpretations. That’s just how it is. I’m not sure they worked the way intended.”

Some voters, many of them filling out absentee ballots and presumably beginning with the county candidate races, used check marks on one side and after flipping it over to where the directions are located, learned that only boxes filled in entirely would be valid. Failure to return to the check marks and correct the errors resulted in the nullification of those specific votes.

“We can count the ones that were filled in,” Sinclair said. “We cannot, however, then count the check marks because it’s inconsistent.”

Nick Handey, elections director in the Secretary of State’s Office, said the intent was to get a “uniform, statewide standard.”

“What is a vote is maybe the hottest topic in the Washington election right now…” said Handey, who oversees a staff of 25 election professionals. “This is a hot issue in the inner sanctum of the election community.”

Since Washington is a “voter intent” state, people must follow the instructions and be consistent. After Congress passed the Help America Vote Act 2002, all of the states were required to put standards in place. The controversial gubernatorial race between Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi suggested that Washington’s standards were not adequate. For example, King County counted votes based on intent that Spokane County would toss out.

“We realized in the governor’s race that we had some counties counting votes that others weren’t,” Handey said.

The emergency WACs raised the ire of canvassing boards, the director of elections said, because some members felt it removed their discretionary power and resulted in votes discarded that should have been counted. The standards sought to remove the subjectivity implicit in attempting to climb into a voter’s mind and decipher the intent of their markings, some of which are inconsistent. Handey likened the task to walking “a slippery slope,” as many people cannot agree on voter intent.

Sinclair, who is unable to sit on the canvassing board because she is on the ballot, has requested that staff tally the number of votes that were nullified because the box was not completely filled in.

“There are significant numbers of individual votes that may not have been counted,” she said.

The auditor said she could not speculate as to how many votes were tossed, but the totals will be available after Nov. 28, the date of certification. Sinclair added that it is unlikely that any of the races would have been affected by the voter error.

“I don’t believe there’s enough to have changed anything,” she said. “Barbara Bailey has pulled away and that was the main close race.”

With 29,691 ballots counted as of Tuesday morning and roughly 1,000 remaining, it was clear that incumbent Republican Barbara Bailey would retain the 10th District State Representative Position 2 seat.

Handey said that 99 percent of the voters statewide filled the ballots out correctly. He agreed with Sinclair that the likelihood of any races being affected by the discarded votes is slim.

“There isn’t any reason to believe that these ballots skew towards any particular party,” he said.

Chief Deputy Anne LaCour has served on the canvassing board in place of the auditor. Sinclair, who sits in on the meetings, commended LaCour and her staff for their work.

“My staff has been carrying the water on this project,” Sinclair said. “Anne’s done a very fine job. They’ve put in a lot of long hours because of the new rules.”

Other counties using the same system have experienced similar instances of voter error.

“It is happening to some degree around the state,” the auditor said. “If you had all electronic machines, it would not be an issue. But we have paper.”

And with paper and the new state rules comes additional headaches for staff in the auditor’s office, who must manually examine the individual votes and pull out ballots with inconsistent markings, and the canvassing board, which makes the final decision on what votes should be counted.

“The canvassing board is having quite a job, because now all of these ballots, instead of being read by the machine on the assumption that the voter marked it the way they intended, they get pulled,” Sinclair said. “That’s part of what takes us so long in accounting. They do visual inspection of all those pieces of paper.”

The codes that were put in place this year could be here to stay, Sinclair said. The auditor’s office will now focus on educating the public, now with a little more time to operate.

Handey said the new rules are not a done deal. Once the election is over, he and his staff will revisit the standards and work on finding a way to navigate the “slippery slope.” Secretary of State Sam Reed would ultimately have to approve any new codes.

“I can’t tell you how it’s going to come out,” he said, adding that the Legislature could possibly take away the discretion of the Secretary of State’s Office. “But we’re absolutely committed to revisiting it. A marking in Spokane County and Island County should be counted the same.”

Regardless of the state-induced hitches in the process, the votes in Island County will be tallied by Tuesday.

“Come hell or high water, we have to be done,” the auditor said.