State fixes glitch on site showing voter registration status

The Washington Secretary of State’s Office said it’s fixed a glitch on its website that erroneously indicated to some voters that they’re not registered to vote just as ballots for the August primary have been mailed out.

One affected voter was Paulina Oberg, a resident of Vancouver, who took to a local Facebook group late last week to write that the website MyVote, which is administered by the Secretary of State, told her she wasn’t registered.

Erich Ebel, communications director for the Secretary of State, said that the cause of the problem was a brief interruption between the public interface of the website and the state voter database.

“That caused people to receive an inaccurate message that they were unregistered,” he said.

He said the Secretary of State’s Office is still investigating the interruption and, if voters still have concerns, they can call its Elections Division. He said an even better option for concerned voters is to call their local county auditor’s office.

Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said that he heard that the MyVote system wasn’t working and confirmed it himself.

“It showed my wife and myself not being registered to vote,” he said.

He stressed that the county auditor, who oversees elections, uses its own voter registration database to determine who is a valid voter and where to send ballots. He said that concerned voters are welcome to call or email with questions.

He said that ballots were mailed out last week to Clark County voters. If voters haven’t received a ballot by Friday, they should contact Clark County Elections Office he said.