Mason County Verified Voter Pilot Project
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Mason County, WA, Auditor Steve Duenkel told the County Commissioners at Tuesday’s regular meeting that his office hopes to try an alternative to using signatures for ballot verification.
Last year the WA State Legislature passed a new law, leading to - RCW 29A.40.111 - allowing counties to propose projects in a future election to replace signature verification with a different authentication method.
Per RCW 29A.40.11, Duenkel and his elections office team have made a formal written proposal to the WA State Secretary of State’s office. Their plan wants to use either a voter’s state driver’s license number or state identification number, along with the voter’s date of birth, as the alternate means for ballot authentication.
The idea is to replace “subjective” signature verification with two “objective” pieces of personal data. Additionally, there will be an external privacy sleeve for ballot returns, so no voter information will be visible on the return envelope. According to Duenkel, this will be a good safeguard to maintain ballot anonymity and sensitive voter data, including personal identifiers and, when applicable, political affiliations.
If approved by the WA Secretary of State, the voluntary pilot program would start with the Mason County February 2026 Special Election. Voters will be given the opportunity to “Opt-in” to the program on the declaration envelope. Upon return, ballots from participating voters will be verified using DOB and WA DL/ID information already maintained in the centralized statewide voter registration database list maintained by the OSoS.
“We’ve been coordinating with the OSoS on the project. We think they’re going to approve it. We think that will help reduce the rate and number of ballot challenges for signature mismatch in an election. If the proposal is approved, the OSoS will provide funding,” Duenkel said.
Duenkel also believes the new method should speed up the vote-counting process.
Bill Bruch
Bill Bruch is the WA State GOP Election Integrity Committee Chairman (5th year), WAGOP Executive Board Member (5th Year), Skagit County GOP Chairman (9th year), Citizen Journalist, Blogger, Business Owner, 2020 WA State House Representative Candidate, Former Council Member, and WA State 2016 and 2024 RNC National Convention Delegate.