HB 2978 - DIGEST

Requires all voting systems in Washington state to produce a voter-verified paper ballot, to be read and verified by the voter at time of voting, without the use of an interface, except as may be needed for certain disabled individuals, and placed in a ballot box either by the voter or voting machine, to be used as the official ballot in recounts and election audits.

Requires each county in the state to conduct mandatory random manual audits of the voter-verified paper ballots, of five percent of all precincts in all counties, of all races, of all votes cast on all ballots for that precinct, at the polling place. The audits must be random, chosen by lottery immediately after the polls close.

Declares that a manual audit of the voter-verified paper ballots is automatically required for anomalous results. The required audits are not part of the random five-percent audit requirement. Anomalous results are any of the following: (1) Insufficient randomness;

(2) Discrepant trends in analysis of results in each precinct;

(3) Results reported very late;

(4) Excess overvotes or undervotes;

(5) Vote totals that do not match the number registered as having voted;

(6) Problems with vote counting or vote tabulating systems;

(7) Discrepancies in vote totals reported from the polling place to a central counting system, or from a central counting system to the state counting system;

(8) Excessive discrepancy between the electronic vote count totals and the voter-verified paper ballot totals, regardless of whether the discrepancy would overturn the election.

Requires a report of the polling place tally of votes to be posted at the polling place before transmission of vote totals to the county or central counting, and before ballots are transported to a central counting location. All polling place totals must be reconciled with the totals received at the central counting location. Each counting location must reconcile totals with county or state counting records.