To ensure the accuracy of King County elections from start to finish, the Metropolitan King County Council has called on the Washington State Legislature to revise state law and allow counties to adopt customized procedures for conducting post-election audits.

"All King County asks is state authorization to adopt a more thorough post-election audit system," said Councilmember Dow Constantine. "The current rules were written with small counties in mind, limiting our ability to do all that King County's nearly two million citizens-and well over a million voters-need and deserve."

"In light of our county's move to an all-mail voting system, as well as the high voter turnout expected in next year's election, it is imperative that we have the tools necessary to ensure fair and accurate results," said Councilmember Julia Patterson. "Our request of the Legislature is the only method we have to lawfully conduct a more comprehensive, random and customized audit of our elections."

State law currently limits the auditing of election results to three precincts, or 1,800 ballots. With nearly 60 percent of registered voters in King County noted as permanent absentee voters and the County's goal of conducting an all-mail election in 2008, members expressed concern the current law doesn't permit a sufficient number of ballots to be audited and doesn't require the auditing of a random selection of ballots.

King County has 2,555 precincts, and in the 2008 presidential election King County voters are expected to cast 900,000 ballots. Under current law only 0.12 percent to 0.20 percent of those ballots would be audited, far too few to reveal machine malfunction or fraud, according to county officials.

The motion approved by the council calls for the revision of state law to give the larger counties in Washington the ability to adopt customized procedures for conducting routine, random, post-election audits of election results.

The audit method must be statistically effective in assuring the accuracy of election results as the current procedure directed by state law for other counties. The proposal will be added to King County's Legislative Agenda for the 2008 session of the state Legislature.