Your not-so-private ballot

On the surface, co-chair of the Committee for the Support of Good Schools Richard Harris’ remarks to the Cheney School Board during the public comment portion of the board’s Feb. 25 meeting likely went unnoticed.

In advocating for rerunning the $44.88 million Cheney High School expansion and renovation bond after its near passage in the Feb. 10 special election, Harris said he was “able to look up” voter turnout numbers for the election that revealed only one-third of registered voters in the district, who were also parents of students in the district, voted.

“Two-thirds of eligible voters with kids in our district did not vote at all,” he concluded.

While some might have shrugged these comments off and move on, others might have asked the question “How does he know that?” The answers are at once simple but also not so obvious.

The answer to the assertion about the number of registered voters who voted in the election is easily obtained through a report called a “matchback.” Matchbacks contain information provided by individuals when they register to vote, their full name, street or postal address, city and zip code. The county election office then adds the voter’s precinct number, district and the state and county voter identification numbers.

It’s a concept dating back to the days when Washington state voters physically went to the polls on election days, Spokane County Auditor Vicki Dalton said. Polling site officers “poll watchers” had a list of voters eligible to vote at that location. When the voter arrived, the poll watchers checked them off the list and handed them a ballot.

Dalton said they also had “roamers” who went to different sites to compare lists and make sure those voting at unassigned sites were identified to make sure someone didn’t vote twice. That information was collated at the county election office to produce the matchback report indicating who voted.

“That concept carried over into absentee ballots, and now vote by mail,” Dalton said.

When Washington went to the all-mail ballot system after 2008, another piece of information was added to matchback reports — the date the voter returned their ballot. This allows organizations receiving and using the report to not only track who voted, but when they voted and over time, voting trends.

Dalton said the more sophisticated campaigns and organizations often pick up matchback reports daily, and utilize that information to guide their get out the vote and advocacy efforts.

“You want to stop robo-calls?” Dalton asked. “Get your ballot in to us in the first three or four days.”

Spokane County Elections Department Manager Mike McLaughlin said the information provided could also enable creation of a “reverse matchback” report: a list of individuals who did not cast a ballot in an election. The process would require comparing the matchback report to the overall list of registered voters, and removing those who cast a ballot.

“We don’t get too many of those (requests),” McLaughlin said of reverse matchbacks.

McLaughlin said 10 organizations request matchback reports for the Feb. 10 election. The only two organizations on the West Plains were the Medical Lake School District and the Cheney School District.

According to a Cheney Free Press public information request, the Cheney School District’s request was submitted with the county on Jan. 26, with Sharon Throop, assistant to Superintendent Dr. Debra Clemens, signing the request.

County elections data lists 17,065 individuals registered to vote in the Cheney School District, with a Free Press public records request for the matchback report revealing 6,439 individuals returning their ballots, a 37.7 percent turnout.

The origin of information for the second part of Harris’ comment, “eligible voters with kids in our district,” is less clear.

“We don’t have that information,” Dalton added.

When contacted about the matchback report and Harris’ remarks, Cheney School District Superintendent Clemens didn’t acknowledge receipt of the matchback report, but instead kept referring back to the citizens committee. She added she didn’t know what the committee was doing, having never attended any meetings, and that they could do their own analysis of voter information.

Dierk Meierbachtol, special assistant for legal affairs at the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said FERPA (Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act) laws prevent school districts from public dissemination of a lot of student and their family’s information. The exception to this is school directories, which Meierbachtol said FERPA acknowledges contain information that can otherwise be publicly available.

“Theoretically, anybody could crosscheck a school district directory against any other information,” Meierbachtol said.

Clemens said that in looking at the general participation rate for the Feb. 10 election it was clear there were a lot of voters in the district who did not participate.

“We always encourage people to vote,” she added.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.