Snohomish County is the latest WA county to move to all mail-in elections.
In a 3-2 split, Democrat county Councilmen Kirke Sievers, Dave Gossett and Dave Somers this morning outvoted Republican Councilmen Gary Nelson and John Koster.
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The council made the move to avoid a state mandate to purchase machines to provide a paper audit trail for those who voted at the polls. That would have cost $860,000, plus ongoing storage costs.
Like King County, Snohomish will set up regional dropoff points on election day where voters can deposit their ballots in person. 35 of the state’s 39 counties have either switched to all mail-in voting, or have announced plans to do so.
On a related note, King County Elections has posted a PDF of the Election Center Report evaluating their performance during the November, 2005 election. It’s really detailed, so I haven’t had time to more than skim it, but it’s certainly far from the “shoddy” effort alleged by some OCD bloggers on the right.