Vote 2016
Vote 2016

Since the advent of vote by mail in Wash­ing­ton State’s largest coun­ty sev­er­al years ago, jour­nal­ists, activists, and cit­i­zens around these parts have become accus­tomed to a King Coun­ty Elec­tions results sched­ule that looks like this:

  • Elec­tion Night: 8:15 PM results drop
  • Sub­se­quent days: Addi­tion­al results post­ed around 4 or 4:30 PM

But this year, things are going to be dif­fer­ent. Very different.

Deter­mined to speed up the pro­cess­ing of bal­lots, King Coun­ty Elec­tions has added a night shift, and plans to release fresh num­bers in the mid­dle of the night, every night, for the next sev­er­al days. This is the post­ing sched­ule for this year:

  • Elec­tion Night, 8:15 PM: First results drop
  • Wednes­day, 1:30 AM: Sec­ond results drop
  • Wednes­day, 3:30 PM: Third results drop
  • Thurs­day, 3:30 AM: Fourth results drop

Yes, you read that cor­rect­ly… King Coun­ty Elec­tions plans to release new num­bers at 3:30 AM — as in the mid­dle of the night — every day start­ing Thurs­day, Novem­ber 10th, and end­ing Sun­day, Novem­ber 13th.

They are not stop­ping for Vet­er­ans Day or the week­end. They will be count­ing around the clock until we get to Sun­day. The pace will slow after that, but there will still be dai­ly releas­es up until Thanks­giv­ing hits.

There­after, the plan is for there to be one results post­ing a day at 3:30 PM. That changes to 5:30 PM once we get to Thanks­giv­ing week.

You can see the cal­en­dar for your­self here.

So, for the next few days, you can expect fresh num­bers to already be avail­able out of King Coun­ty when you wake up, due to the night shift and the new twen­ty-four hour oper­a­tions King Coun­ty has instituted.

Clear­ly, man­age­ment at King Coun­ty Elec­tions does­n’t want to be a lag­gard in this elec­tion. They have been antic­i­pat­ing a huge vol­ume of bal­lots, and they have obtained funds from the King Coun­ty Coun­cil to work around the clock so that the pile of unprocessed bal­lots does­n’t get out of hand. As a con­se­quence, results watch­ing is going to feel very, very dif­fer­ent here than it has in years past.

Pierce Coun­ty Elec­tions also plans a Wednes­day AM release, though not in the mid­dle of the night. They’ll drop fresh num­bers at 9:30 AM tomorrow.

About the author

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, as well as the founder of NPI's sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He has worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps.

Adjacent posts

Enjoyed what you just read? Make a donation

Thank you for read­ing The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute’s jour­nal of world, nation­al, and local politics.

Found­ed in March of 2004, The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has been help­ing peo­ple through­out the Pacif­ic North­west and beyond make sense of cur­rent events with rig­or­ous analy­sis and thought-pro­vok­ing com­men­tary for more than two decades.

The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate is fund­ed by read­ers like you and trust­ed spon­sors. We don’t accept unso­licit­ed ad buys or pub­lish con­tent in exchange for money.

Help us keep The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate edi­to­ri­al­ly inde­pen­dent and freely avail­able to all by becom­ing a mem­ber of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute today. Or make a dona­tion to sus­tain our essen­tial research and advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ism. Your con­tri­bu­tion will allow us to con­tin­ue bring­ing you fea­tures like Last Week In Con­gress, live cov­er­age of events like Net­roots Nation or the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, and reviews of books and doc­u­men­tary films.

Become an NPI mem­ber Make a one-time donation