Voters now have less than twelve hours to get their ballots to a drop box for their votes to be counted in Washington's top two primary election, with the 8pm Tuesday deadline now drawing near. But as candidates across the state make a last-minute push to get out the vote, turnout numbers paint a fairly bleak portrait of who is making their electoral voice heard.
On ballots due today are a broad array of qualifying contests for congress, state legislature, county council, supreme court, municipal court, as well as levies and special local elections intended to fill vacancies. Organizations – including The Urbanist – have issued endorsements to give voters a better window into which candidates might align with their goals and visions, as campaign literature has been flooding mailboxes. But the first step is getting voters to open their envelope.
As of yesterday, just one day before ballots were due, less than one in five eligible voters across Washington had gotten their ballots in. According to the election watchdogs at the the Northwest Progressive Institute (NPI), that turnout rate lags the 23% of voters who had turned in their ballots at the same point in the primary four years ago.
"Final turnout in the August 2022 Top Two election ended up being 40.99%; we may struggle to meet or surpass that this year," NPI's Andrew Villeneuve wrote. "It is common for the August Top Two election to have submajority turnout, meaning less than fifty percent. This century, there’s only been one Top Two that got over 50%, and that was in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic."
It gets worse. Younger and middle-aged voters are even less likely to be turning in a ballot, with turnout among those aged 34 sitting below 10%. The next age bracket up, 35-44, can't say they're doing much better, at 10.6%. Meanwhile more than 40% of voters aged 65 and older have gotten their ballots in. Ultimately, this lopsided turnout makes a difference when it comes to who advances to the November general election, where turnout is substantially higher.
Turnout is far from equal geographically as well. Turnout in King County lags behind some of Washington's smaller counties: as of Monday, 27.08% of voters in Chelan County had returned their ballots compared to 17.13% in King County, though that number did creep up to 19% by Tuesday morning. Voter participation in Pierce County lags even further, with just 16.6% of ballots returned as of yesterday.
King County Elections
As the hours tick by, the window to influence who will make decisions around issues like state spending and policy, resources for libraries, and maybe even the fate of a statewide income tax, grows narrower and narrower. Now's the time to be checking in on your friends and neighbors and asking them if they want to make those decisions or stick to the sidelines.
Elections Committee
