In a May 15 Port Orchard Independent Guest Opinion, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s Trent England asks this question: “Is Washington’s elections record-keeping so bad it’s illegal?”

In it, he argues that the Office of the Secretary of State failed in its responsibility to keep accurate records of voters who participated in the 2008 General Election.

Unfortunately, the numbers used to support this case are not accurate.

Mr. England asserts that only 2,853,887 voter records were credited with voting. Our analysis shows 3,055,940 records were credited.

Our office attempted to help Mr. England’s organization correctly use the information our office provides. In a Jan. 30 e-mail to a member of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, our office noted: “We believe that if you use the procedure we describe in the note, you will obtain a more complete count of our voters credited with voting in the general election.”

Some records — not anywhere near the number Mr. England claims — are not credited with voting, and there are very good reasons for this, as described below.

When a voter returns a ballot, election officials verify the signature on the outside envelope and the voter is credited with voting at that time.

At this point, the outside envelope is separated from the inside envelope containing the ballot. When the inside envelope is later opened, however, a number of situations can occur where a ballot is not counted for that election.

For example, the inside envelope might not have a ballot in it. Or the ballot inside the envelope might be for a prior election.

Or the ballot is spoiled in such a way that it cannot be counted. Or, two ballots are placed in the same envelope and neither can be counted.

Or a voter has not properly completed the ballot in such a way that votes may not be counted.

The foregoing are situations where a voter is “credited” with voting but a ballot cannot be counted for that voter. Election officials are well aware that “voters credited with voting” will never match “ballots counted” for these reasons, and no part of the reconciliation process in elections is built around this system for this reason.

To the contrary, the ballot reconciliation process authorized by law requires that counties ensure that ballots received equals the number of ballots counted and rejected.

That is the reconciliation process required by state law and that is the process observed by county election officials statewide.

Due to the timing of transferring information within the county systems and ultimately to the state system, a few voters who become ineligible to vote in a county shortly after an election may not get credited with voting.

However, contrary to Mr. England’s assertion, this circumstance does not create “the possibility that the voter’s registration might be canceled wrongly in the future.”

The National Voting Rights Act does not allow any voter’s record to be canceled based solely on failing to vote. Only “inactive” voters may be canceled after they haven’t voted in two consecutive federal elections.

An “active” voter becomes “inactive” only when an official mailing is returned to the elections department as undeliverable. If the voter participates in an election subsequent to becoming “inactive,” the voter’s address is updated and the voter’s status returns to “active.” That assures the voter will not be canceled wrongly in the future and is no way impacted by the maintenance of the voting history.

Mr. England either misrepresents the Election Assistance Commission’s guidance stating that state voter registration systems ”’must also track an individual’s voting history’ (emphasis added) in order to comply with the legal provisions on removing registrations and requiring identification” or fails to fully appreciate how the Washington State system works.

In the same section quoted by Mr. England, the EAC guidance also states: “This voter-specific information (voting history) must be accessible and available to the appropriate election officials so these provisions may be timely met.” (Emphasis added) In Washington’s system, it is the county election officials who run the HAVA and NVRA-required list maintenance, and they have all the data they need provided by the state and county systems to do their jobs accurately.

The mission and requirement of the Office of the Secretary of State is to maintain an official state registration roll that is an accurate reflection of everyone who is eligible to vote. The counties are responsible for reconciling the ballots received and cast. This is not the function of the Office of Secretary of State, or a capability of the voter registration database (VRDB).

Therefore, our office provides a warning with the data: “The Voter Registration Database extract and the Voting History file should not be used to create election abstracts of official returns. The Office of the Secretary of State provides a variety of official abstracts from recent elections upon request.”

While we continually strive to improve our processes, the integrity of the registration rolls is a high priority with the Office of the Secretary of State.

Nick Handy is State Elections Director for the Office of the Secretary of State.