The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on its website that the Green Party of San Juan County, Washington, filed suit in the state Supreme Court, accusing Secretary of State Sam Reed for violating the “state Constitution’s guarantee of ‘absolute’ ballot secrecy.” The suit claims “about one million voters in Washington state have used ballots that contained unique bar code identifiers.” Plaintiffs’ attorney Knoll Lowney said, “Over a million voters have markings on their ballots that are unique to their ballot. In many counties there is a linkage being made between the ballot and the voter identification, so there is a potential link between the voted ballot and the person who voted it.”
State Elections Director Nick Handy said the “claims of privacy violations are ‘simply not true.'” In a statement, Handy said, “It is not possible in Washington to trace any ballot back to the individual voter.”