Washington Administrative Code
Title 434 - Secretary of State
Chapter 434-261 - Counting center procedures
Section 434-261-100 - Ballot duplication procedures

(1) If a ballot is damaged, unreadable, uncountable, or unable to be resolved by the tabulation system, a team of two or more people working together must duplicate ballots to reflect the voter's intent according to WAC 434-261-086. A different team of two or more people working together must audit every duplicated ballot to verify the ballots were duplicated correctly. The voter's original ballot may not be altered. The county auditor shall tabulate the duplicate ballot.

If voter intent is not clear, the ballot must be referred to the canvassing board. When duplicating ballots, the county auditor shall take the following steps to create and maintain an audit trail of the action taken:

(2) Written procedures shall be established detailing the situations in which ballots may be duplicated. These procedures shall be included as a part of the county canvassing board manual.

(3) If a county uses an automated duplication program, only votes appearing in a human-readable form on the original ballot may be duplicated onto a machine-readable ballot. The human-readable votes on the original ballot must be compared to the votes printed on the duplicated ballot to ensure that the votes are duplicated accurately. If a human-readable version of any races or ballot pages of the original ballot are not returned or available, votes in those races may not be duplicated or counted.