Washington State will likely set a new record low for general election turnout this year

As of this evening, it’s been one week since Elec­tion Night 2015, and the num­ber of bal­lots still await­ing pro­cess­ing by coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials has dwin­dled to less than thir­ty-three thou­sand statewide. Turnout cur­rent­ly stands at 37.44%, and it looks like it will end up under forty per­cent, well below Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman’s opti­mistic fore­cast of forty-six per­cent from last month.

Any­one who fol­lows pol­i­tics, includ­ing Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers, is prob­a­bly already aware that turnout so far this year has been poor. But as coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials run out of bal­lots to add to the count, we got to won­der­ing: Just how bad is this year’s turnout com­pared to past years?

The dis­turb­ing answer is that this year’s low gen­er­al elec­tion turnout is absolute­ly unprece­dent­ed. It could be the worst in state history. 

We’re not sure whether it is or not, because the his­toric turnout data kind­ly fur­nished to us by the fine folks who work in Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman’s office only goes back to 1936. But this much we know: Turnout in 2015 will like­ly be at least the worst gen­er­al elec­tion turnout in over sev­en­ty-five years. 

That is a tru­ly sober­ing thought. So much for vote-by-mail being a turnout booster.

It is worth not­ing that, for much of Wash­ing­ton’s his­to­ry, statewide gen­er­al elec­tions were only held in even-num­bered years. In the ear­ly 1970s, state law was changed to pro­vide for state-lev­el gen­er­al elec­tions in odd-num­bered years, too. Before 1973, only local offices were con­test­ed in odd-num­bered years.

The first few such elec­tions had midterm-like turnout above a major­i­ty: 57.78% in 1973, 55.47% in 1975, 52.47% in 1977. Begin­ning in 1979, turnout in odd-num­bered years start­ed reg­u­lar­ly dip­ping below fifty percent.

Gen­er­al elec­tion turnout pre­vi­ous­ly reached a low of 40.18% thir­ty years ago, in 1985, rebound­ing to 42.32% in 1987 and 48.11% in 1989.

Since then, odd-num­bered gen­er­al elec­tion year turnout has fluc­tu­at­ed. It’s been above a major­i­ty in cer­tain years and below it in others.

But nev­er has it been as bad as this year.

The kind of turnout we’re see­ing in this year’s gen­er­al elec­tion is the kind we usu­al­ly expect to see in a Top Two elec­tion. Vot­er turnout in the 2012 Top Two, for instance, was 38.48%, a whole per­cent­age point high­er than the cur­rent 2015 gen­er­al turnout (which will rise slight­ly before cer­ti­fi­ca­tion on Novem­ber 24th).

Here is a turnout table show­ing all odd-num­bered gen­er­al elec­tions since 1973:

Note that per­cent­ages in this chart have been round­ed to one dec­i­mal place.

As you can see, in the more than forty years since we have held state-lev­el gen­er­al elec­tions in odd-num­bered years, we have nev­er had turnout fall below forty per­cent. But it looks like it’s going to hap­pen this year.

Above is a chart show­ing vot­er turnout in Wash­ing­ton from 1936 to the present day. The high peaks are pres­i­den­tial elec­tion years. The val­leys are ini­tial­ly midterms, and then, start­ing in 1973, they are odd-num­bered years, after the state start­ed tack­ing bal­lot mea­sures and spe­cial elec­tions onto local elections.

The high­est and low­est turnout in mod­ern times and the high­est and low­est turnout in the state’s younger years are not­ed on the chart.

Con­sid­er­ing how big the turnout dis­par­i­ty has got­ten in mod­ern times, it is worth dis­cussing whether state-lev­el elec­tions should revert to being held sole­ly in even-num­bered years. This would mean that we would only con­sid­er ini­tia­tives and ref­er­en­da every two years, as opposed to every year.

This is how it works in Ore­gon, which also has a vote-by-mail elec­tions system.

From our per­spec­tive, it does­n’t make sense for a minor­i­ty of the state’s reg­is­tered vot­ers to be mak­ing laws for the major­i­ty. Even in midterm cycles where turnout is unusu­al­ly poor, like in 2014 or 2002, turnout has still been more than a major­i­ty, so if we only con­sid­ered ini­tia­tives, ref­er­en­da, and con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments in even-num­bered years, we would not have the few mak­ing deci­sions for the many.

Recent pres­i­den­tial elec­tions do com­pare more favor­ably to those from decades past. In 1944, Wash­ing­to­ni­ans turned out in large num­bers to vote in the nation’s final wartime elec­tion, which pit­ted Demo­c­rat Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt against Repub­li­can Thomas E. Dewey. That record high turnout went unmatched until 2008, when Barack Oba­ma squared off against John McCain.

But again, this year’s turnout is sim­ply awful. It’s embar­rass­ing. We don’t yet know what the exact fig­ure will be, but we do think it’s rea­son­ably safe to con­clude it won’t be more 40.18%, the pre­vi­ous low. By bring­ing this up now, we hope to help fos­ter a con­ver­sa­tion about what we can do to bol­ster turnout in the future, while this year’s elec­tion is still fresh in the minds of those Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who fol­low politics.