Counties certify November general election; 2015 turnout is the worst in state history

Well, it’s offi­cial: The 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion has now been cer­ti­fied by Wash­ing­ton State’s thir­ty-nine coun­ties, and as we pro­ject­ed ear­li­er this month, turnout end­ed up between 38% and 39% (to be pre­cise, 38.45% statewide), which means it’s offi­cial­ly the worst in record­ed state history.

The pre­vi­ous low of 40.18% was set in 1985.

Below is a table show­ing turnout by coun­ty, sort­ed from best to worst. Tiny Garfield Coun­ty had the best turnout in the state, sur­pass­ing 60%, while Yaki­ma Coun­ty had the worst… 32.70%. Both coun­ties are locat­ed east of the Cas­cade Mountains.

Sno­homish Coun­ty, which was a turnout lag­gard ear­ly on, man­aged to improve its show­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly and come in ahead of Pierce County.

King Coun­ty best­ed most of the state’s swing coun­ties with respect to turnout this year, run­ning ahead of the statewide aver­age. The only major swing coun­ties that did bet­ter than King were What­com and Spokane.

Here is an overview of the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion in King County:

• Reg­is­tered vot­ers: 1,193,706
• Bal­lots issued: 1,204,515
• Bal­lots returned: 474,363
• Bal­lots count­ed: 467,608
• Bal­lots cast on acces­si­ble vot­ing units: 274
• Bal­lots returned to drop box­es: 124,837
• Sig­na­tures ini­tial­ly chal­lenged: 4,911
• Sig­na­ture chal­lenges resolved: 2,803
• Bal­lots returned too late: 4,439
• Bal­lots returned as unde­liv­er­able: 11,875
• Calls to vot­er hot­line: 4,141
• Emails from vot­ers: 853

The above data is cour­tesy of King Coun­ty Elections.

Even though King Coun­ty has a pal­try num­ber of bal­lot drop box­es, it’s inter­est­ing to note that more than a quar­ter of all bal­lots were still returned to drop boxes.

A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of bal­lots were reject­ed because they were returned too late… over four thou­sand, as a mat­ter of fact. That’s an absurd­ly high num­ber. Had those bal­lots count­ed, it would have pushed turnout higher.

“We had hoped for a big­ger turnout and appre­ci­ate the vot­ers who got their bal­lots in,” said Sher­ril Huff, direc­tor of King Coun­ty Elec­tions, in a news release. “We are always look­ing for ways to pro­mote vot­er engage­ment and antic­i­pate that next year’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion will see a dra­mat­ic increase in turnout.”

King Coun­ty Elec­tions has one race that is so tight that it will head to an auto­mat­ic recount. That is the fas­ci­nat­ing con­test for Seat­tle City Coun­cil, Dis­trict #1 between Lisa Her­bold and Shan­non Brad­dock. Brad­dock led for much of the count, but she fin­ished just thir­ty-nine votes behind Herbold.

To put that in con­text, there were a total over twen­ty-five thou­sand votes cast in the race, and yet the two can­di­dates are sep­a­rat­ed by a mere thir­ty-nine votes. That’s equiv­a­lent to a dozen or so house­holds on a sin­gle street!

One hun­dred and six­ty-four of the 25,043 votes cast were write-in votes.

“The recount process will begin on Mon­day, Novem­ber 30 and be com­plet­ed on Mon­day, Decem­ber 7th,” King Coun­ty Elec­tions says. “The first few days of the recount process will involve staff and observ­er train­ing and bal­lot sort­ing in order to obtain the votes spe­cif­ic to this Dis­trict No. 1 race. Bal­lots are not stored by district.”

“Actu­al count­ing of the bal­lots is sched­uled to begin on Thurs­day, Decem­ber 3rd and is expect­ed to con­tin­ue through Fri­day, Decem­ber 4th and pos­si­bly the morn­ing of Mon­day, Decem­ber 7th.  After the man­u­al hand count and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is com­plete the Can­vass­ing Board will meet to cer­ti­fy the recount on Mon­day, Decem­ber 7 at 3:00 PM. Final results will be announced by 4:30 PM that day.”