Today is General Election Day 2012! Haven’t voted yet? It’s time to get that ballot in

Today is Gen­er­al Elec­tion Day in Wash­ing­ton State and across the Unit­ed States. Much is at stake. The pres­i­den­cy, four hun­dred and thir­ty five seats in the U.S. House, and a third of the seats in the Sen­ate are all on the line. And that’s just the fed­er­al lev­el posi­tions. Most statewide and state-lev­el posi­tions are also on the line here in Wash­ing­ton, along with the fate of our mar­riage equal­i­ty law.

Have you vot­ed yet? If you have, con­grat­u­la­tions on ful­fill­ing your civic duty as a cit­i­zen of Wash­ing­ton. Haven’t vot­ed yet? It’s time to get that bal­lot in! You’ve only got a few hours left before time runs out to participate.

You should have received your bal­lot in the mail a few weeks ago from the coun­ty you reside in. If you did not receive a bal­lot, or if you have mis­placed your bal­lot, you should call your coun­ty audi­tor or elec­tions office to obtain a pro­vi­sion­al ballot.

Don’t for­get to sign your bal­lot before putting it in a drop box or the mail.

Drop box loca­tions for this election:

• King Coun­ty
• Sno­homish County
• Pierce Coun­ty
• Kit­sap County
• What­com County
• Skag­it County
• Thurston Coun­ty

Not sure who to vote for? If you belong to a par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal par­ty, you may want to con­sult their list of endorsements.

• The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has a list of all of its nom­i­nees for fed­er­al and statewide office, as well as a Per­son­al Endorse­ments Find­er that brings up endorse­ments made by local Demo­c­ra­t­ic organizations.
• The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty main­tains a list of major can­di­dates for statewide and fed­er­al office.

If a stranger calls you or comes to your door offer­ing to turn in your bal­lot, decline their offer. We know that the Repub­li­cans are send­ing paid oper­a­tives out into some neigh­bor­hoods to col­lect bal­lots. King Coun­ty Elec­tions strong­ly dis­cour­ages giv­ing pos­ses­sion or respon­si­bil­i­ty of your bal­lot to any­one oth­er than the U.S. Postal Ser­vice or offi­cial King Coun­ty Elec­tions drop loca­tions. We con­cur with them and urge you to keep cus­tody of your bal­lot till it goes in a drop box or the U.S. Mail.

NPI has tak­en posi­tions on the fol­low­ing statewide bal­lot mea­sures (we do not endorse can­di­dates for office);

• Ini­tia­tive 1185: NO
• Ini­tia­tive 1240: NO
• Ref­er­en­dum 74: APPROVE
• Ini­tia­tive 502: YES
• SJR 8221: REJECT
• SJR 8223: REJECT
• Advi­so­ry Vote No. 1: MAINTAIN
• Advi­so­ry Vote No. 2: MAINTAIN

We also urge you to vote to approve local levies to keep pub­lic ser­vices going, For instance, the City of Kirk­land in King Coun­ty has two levies on the bal­lot. One of them would enhance Kirk­land’s liv­abil­i­ty by pro­vid­ing increased fund­ing for parks. Seat­tle, mean­while, is ask­ing vot­ers to approve a levy to fund replace­ment of the sea­wall down­town (which is a cru­cial­ly impor­tant project).