Today is the last day to register to vote online (or by mail) in Washington for 2016 election

Read­ers, a reminder that today is the dead­line to reg­is­ter to vote in Wash­ing­ton for the 2016 gen­er­al elec­tion. We ought to have same-day vot­er reg­is­tra­tion — allow­ing peo­ple to reg­is­ter up until and on Elec­tion Day — but we don’t. It will be pos­si­ble to reg­is­ter in-per­son for a cou­ple more weeks, but that takes much more work. So please, check with your friends and fam­i­ly and ask:

Are you reg­is­tered to vote?

Vot­ers who join the rolls online by the dead­line tonight will get a bal­lot along with every­one else in about ten days. The Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice isn’t open for busi­ness today (it’s a fed­er­al hol­i­day), but the state and coun­ty audi­tors will hon­or reg­is­tra­tion forms post­marked by tomor­row, Octo­ber 11th.

Face­book and Google have both been noti­fy­ing users about the dead­line, which is help­ing to cause a flur­ry of activ­i­ty at the state’s vot­er reg­is­tra­tion portal.

“MyVote.wa.gov, our main vot­er infor­ma­tion and reg­is­tra­tion tool, was jammed with online busi­ness on Sun­day, spik­ing after the pres­i­den­tial debate last evening. The new record is 23,167, far exceed­ing the pre­vi­ous one-day record of 13,109 that we set recent­ly with a big assist from Face­book and Google,” said David Ammons, spokesman for incum­bent Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman.

It’s nice that Face­book and Google are encour­ag­ing peo­ple to reg­is­ter, but the Sec­re­tary of State’s office should be doing more than just rely­ing on those firms to get the word out about the dead­line. We’d like to see elec­tions offi­cials being more proac­tive about get­ting peo­ple reg­is­tered. That’s some­thing Wyman’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Tina Pod­lodows­ki has made a cen­tral theme of her campaign.

Pod­lodows­ki says she con­sid­ers the job of Sec­re­tary of State to be chief vot­ing offi­cer as opposed to chief elec­tions admin­is­tra­tor. She argues that elec­tions offi­cials should be con­cerned with more than just count­ing votes — they need to be work­ing con­stant­ly on elim­i­nat­ing bar­ri­ers to voting.

That includes mak­ing it eas­i­er for his­tor­i­cal­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed and under­served com­mu­ni­ties to reg­is­ter and return ballots.

Many com­mu­ni­ties are cel­e­brat­ing Indige­nous Peo­ples Day today, and accord­ing­ly, Pod­lodows­ki is urg­ing mem­bers of Wash­ing­ton’s native tribes to reg­is­ter if they have not already done so, as their voic­es need to be heard in this impor­tant election.

Wyman, mean­while, is cel­e­brat­ing all the refer­rals that the state is getting.

“We are delight­ed with the new record num­ber of reg­is­tered vot­ers being set every sin­gle day,” she said. “Sunday’s surge was noth­ing short of amaz­ing, and it looks cer­tain that we’ll have a robust turnout. That lev­el of vot­er engage­ment is so good for self-gov­ern­ment. We need to hear all voices.”

Get­ting vot­ers reg­is­tered is not enough. We also have to encour­age peo­ple to actu­al­ly vote. Robust turnout does­n’t hap­pen by acci­dent and is not a cer­tain­ty — it hap­pens as a result of lots of hard work. Out­reach is cru­cial to high turnout.