It was a wild and chaotic night in the US Election even in the tiny community of Point Roberts.
Advanced voting and mail-in ballots have Joe Biden continuing the Democratic trend like the rest of Washington State with a comfortable 617-203 lead over President Donald Trump. All but one of the votes casted on Election Day, however, weren't counted until sometime on Wednesday thanks to a locked ballot box.
It resulted in a crazy day for Stephen Falk.
The Point Roberts resident and volunteer had two essential travel trips through the Canadian border on Tuesday to the Whatcom County Audit’s Office in Bellingham. The first was to collect the key that would unlock the community’s lone ballot box located in the Marketplace grocery store. The second was to deliver the ballots to Bellingham for counting once the polls were closed.
“We couldn’t get the ballot box open. I’m not sure if it was jammed or just the wrong key which the election office believed it was,” said Falk. “It was bolted to the floor so there was no way it was coming with me.”
Complicating the situation was the Marketplace being open limited hours due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was up to Falk and other volunteers Virginia Lester and Shelley Damewood to wait in the store parking lot for an hour with a portable ballot box. The poll was 15 minutes from closing when one voter showed up. Falk had to drive the one ballot down to Bellingham.
“He was working in Canada, drove over to vote, but never got the actual ballot package,” continued Falk. “He was able to download something which I didn’t even know you could do. He had loose papers and I told him he needed to put them in an envelope. I’m not sure if it’s even going to count.
“I was hoping I could just keep it in the box until the morning, but because of the chain of custody it wasn’t going to work that way and they wanted me to come back with it.”
A Whatcom County election official came to the Marketplace on Wednesday morning to open the ballot box and bring them back to Bellingham, ending Falk’s duties.
The box was installed in the store around mid-October and was emptied every few days by officials who made the trip to Point Roberts.
‘We’ve only had the drop box since the 2016 election,” added Falk. “The only option before was mailing it in or drop it off in the county if you happened to be over there which is what I always did. For the Primary a few months ago they did come up on election night but Shelly drove down the ballots (in 2016). There doesn’t seem to be a universal rule.”
