Can people in the state of Washington vote using a fake name? No, that's not true: Registered voters with impaired vision in King County, Washington, can mark and print their ballots from their home computer. Other counties in the state allow such voters to use touchscreens in their elections office to fill out a ballot. But these are all provisional ballots subject to elections office verification. A Washington state elections spokesperson told Lead Stories that these ballots are not counted until voting officials match the name and signature with voter registration information already on file.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook (archived here) on October 23, 2024. The text in the screenshot read:
Holy ---- I just went online to a WA county government website and it LITERALLY just created a voter ballot for a random fake named individual that I created at a random address in one of the county's towns that I can print out and mail in and vote!!!! I did this in less than 5 minutes.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Nov 6 13:11:07 2024 UTC)
The Facebook post implied that people in Washington state could vote using a fake name. It showed images of a marked ballot, a declaration and signature sheet with what appeared to be a printed fake name and address, and a signature line. The post did not say whether the ballot was mailed to be counted for the 2024 election. The post also showed an "Envelope Cut-out Sheet" pre-addressed to "King County Elections."
Since 2011, every registered voter in Washington state receives their ballot by mail (archived here). They mark their choices by hand, place the ballot in a prepaid envelope, sign the outside of the envelope and mail it to their county elections office. There are no precincts where voters cast their ballot in person on a voting machine.
King County designed the "Online Ballot Marking" site (archived here) for voters "who are blind or have low vision," according to its accessible voting options page (archived here). This allows the visually impaired to use screen readers (archived here) or other software at home to help them read the ballot.
Once finished, they print the ballot and envelope cut-out sheet, tape it to the outside of an envelope, place the ballot inside, seal and sign the envelope and mail it to the King County Elections Office. King County also encourages military and other overseas voters (archived here) to use this same process.
A spokesperson for King County Elections told Lead Stories that if a fake ballot had been submitted, it would have been rejected if the name and signature did not match the voter registration records on file.
"It's important to know that just because a ballot is created and printed doesn't mean it will be counted," Halei Watkins, communications manager for King County Elections (archived here), wrote in an email to Lead Stories on November 6, 2024:
If someone prints a ballot through our Online Ballot Marking Program the first thing that happens when it's received at our headquarters in Renton is our team verifies (1) that it belongs to a registered voter and (2) that the voter hasn't already returned a ballot. If it doesn't meet those requirements, it's rejected. If it does meet those requirements, then our staff proceed to verify that the return signature matches the one we have on that voter's registration record. Ballot envelopes don't even get opened until we confirm the signature is a match.
Watkins added that fake ballot submissions are rare.
"We received two in the August 2024 Primary out of nearly 560,000 ballots returned and six out of about 522,000 ballots returned in the November 2023 General Election," she said. "All were rejected."
All 39 counties in Washington allow visually impaired registered voters to cast their ballot using a touchscreen or accessible voting unit (AVU) (archived here) at their local elections office. Those ballots must also be printed, placed in a signed sealed envelope and mailed. A spokesperson for the Washington Secretary of State told Lead Stories on November 7, 2024, that those ballots would also be subject to the same scrutiny as any other mailed-in ballot to make sure the signature matches the one on file at the elections office.
It is a felony (archived here) to fraudulently "receive or cast a ballot" in Washington state, said Watkins. According to the statute (archived here), the punishment is five years in prison or a $10,000 fine or both.
"[A fraudulent voter] would get referred for prosecution if there was any reason to believe they were attempting to commit fraud rather than just making a mistake and thinking they're registered when they're not," Watkins said.
At the time this was written, The Dispatch had reviewed the same claim.
Other Lead Stories fact checks regarding the 2024 election can be found here.
