PACIFIC COUNTY, Wash. — The Washington Secretary of State’s office is setting the record straight after Pacific County's elections office mistakenly published sample ballot results on their website Thursday afternoon.
"That wasn't our intention,” said Alex Gerow, Pacific County Auditor. “It was supposed to go to a test site."
Gerow says these sample results were generated as part of the county's Logic and Accuracy Test of their tabulation equipment — something all Washington counties are legally required to do. The results are simulated, no based on ballots that have actually been submitted.
"This test we do before every election,” said Gerow. “It's put on by the Secretary of State's office and it's to make sure that, come election night, everything goes smoothly when uploading our results."
Gerow said these test results were on the county's website for about two hours before officials were notified and took them down. The county website is where nearly 17,000 registered voters could go to check the results of the general election on Tuesday, November 7.
"This was not tabulating anybody's ballot,” said Derrick Nunnally with the Washington State’s Secretary of State office. “This was not posting any results early. We have a very specific state law that says all counties cannot tabulate the ballots people have sent in until 8 p.m. on election night."
As far as Nunnally knows, no election laws were violated. He hopes voters understand this was a lesson learned for both the county elections office and the secretary of state's office.
"It's important to safeguard what you put out there on a public-facing site, and to know that even though a small thing that happened for two hours on a Thursday the week before an election can get the public's significant concern."
Nunnally assured voters that true election results will be accurately counted and reported.
Moving forward, Gerow said Pacific County elections staff will be double-checking the URL to ensure they're publishing these run-throughs to the test website, not the official county website.