A reminder to all Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers who live in Wash­ing­ton that today is Elec­tion Day! Tonight, at 8 PM, is the the dead­line to return bal­lots in the first of two spe­cial elec­tion peri­ods sched­uled to be held this year.

We real­ly ought to do away with spe­cial elec­tions alto­geth­er and save a lot of mon­ey and grief by con­sol­i­dat­ing to a June pri­ma­ry (a real pri­ma­ry, not the stu­pid Top Two sys­tem we cur­rent­ly use) and a Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion. But that would require chang­ing state law. Until that hap­pens, school dis­tricts have the option of putting levy and bond pro­pos­als on the Feb­ru­ary bal­lot. And many do.

In King Coun­ty, there are ten school dis­tricts with levies or bonds:

Today is the elec­tion day dead­line for vot­ers in Auburn, Fed­er­al Way, Fife, Mer­cer Island, Ren­ton, Seat­tle, Tuk­wila and Vashon Island school dis­tricts. Vot­ers have until 8 PM to return bal­lots to a drop-off loca­tion or acces­si­ble vot­ing cen­ter.

King Coun­ty Elec­tions has received 130,142 bal­lots to date out of more than 627,000 sent for today’s spe­cial elec­tion.

Vot­ers who are mail­ing bal­lots today need to remem­ber to affix a first class (49 cents) stamp and ensure that the mail will be post­marked today. Bal­lots arriv­ing with a post­mark lat­er than elec­tion day, by law, will not be opened or count­ed. King Coun­ty Elec­tions is fore­cast­ing a 31 per­cent turnout in today’s spe­cial elec­tion.

If you are reg­is­tered to vote and did­n’t receive a bal­lot in the mail a cou­ple weeks ago, it’s prob­a­bly because your school dis­trict does­n’t have any­thing on the bal­lot. But if you live in the afore­men­tioned dis­tricts in King Coun­ty and did­n’t get a bal­lot, some­thing’s wrong, and you should call King Coun­ty Elec­tions right away.

NPI gen­er­al­ly encour­ages you to vote “yes” on your local levies and bonds, unless you have a real­ly good rea­son for vot­ing no. As our friends at Fuse note:

School levies and bonds pro­vide essen­tial fund­ing for basic class­room sup­plies, build­ing main­te­nance, tech­nol­o­gy, and more.

It’s essen­tial that we vote YES because the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have refused to close tax loop­holes or raise rev­enue to ful­ly fund edu­ca­tion. While we con­tin­ue to push con­ser­v­a­tives to do their part at the state lev­el, we must act now at the local lev­el to ensure all our kids have the tools and oppor­tu­ni­ties to succeed.

Here’s a list of things your prop­er­ty tax dol­lars end up pay­ing for:

• Hire fac­ul­ty (teach­ers and staff)
• Low­er class sizes
• New facil­i­ties con­struc­tion and build­ing maintenance
• Seis­mic retro­fits, ener­gy effi­cien­cy upgrades, and green school initiatives
• Pur­chase and oper­ate school buses
• Stu­dent ath­let­ics and the arts (band, choir, theater)
• Acquire text­books and class­room materials
• Ser­vices for stu­dents who are dis­abled, have spe­cial needs, or speak a first lan­guage oth­er than English

If we want great schools, then we have to invest. Qual­i­ty pub­lic ser­vices come at a price. By pool­ing our resources, we can afford these things. Oth­er­wise, we can’t. If you’re ready to do your part, please vote yes for our schools.