Will Washington State once again set a new record for low general voter turnout in 2017?

Tomor­row — Tues­day, Novem­ber 7th, 2017 — is Gen­er­al Elec­tion Day across Wash­ing­ton State. Although there are no statewide posi­tions at stake or even statewide ini­tia­tives on the bal­lot this year, five leg­isla­tive dis­tricts are hold­ing spe­cial elec­tions — the out­come of which will deter­mine who con­trols the Sen­ate in 2018.

At the same time, thou­sands of local gov­ern­ments across Wash­ing­ton State (most cities and some coun­ties, plus ports, and spe­cial dis­tricts) are hold­ing their reg­u­lar elec­tions. Most juris­dic­tions have sev­er­al leg­isla­tive posi­tions to fill, but some have exec­u­tive and/or judi­cial posi­tions as well, includ­ing the state’s largest cities (Seat­tle, Taco­ma, and Everett all have open may­oral positions).

Sad­ly, vot­er turnout remains extreme­ly low as of this morn­ing, with just thir­ty hours to go before the dead­line arrives to return bal­lots. Only 16.8% of reg­is­tered vot­ers had returned their bal­lots as of this morn­ing’s 8 AM report.

Alarm­ing­ly, Wash­ing­ton State appears to be on course to set a new low record for vot­er turnout in a gen­er­al elec­tion, eras­ing the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion set in Novem­ber 2015 dur­ing the last local elec­tion year.

Two years ago, the morn­ing before Elec­tion Day, the Sec­re­tary of State report­ed that 17.2% of reg­is­tered vot­ers had returned bal­lots. That’s a cou­ple of ticks high­er than the turnout author­i­ties are cur­rent­ly report­ing for 2017. And that 2015 elec­tion became the record set­ter for the worst turnout in the record­ed elec­toral his­to­ry of Wash­ing­ton State, with only 38.45% of reg­is­tered vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing.

It would appear we are on pace to do even worse this year… unless we act quickly.

What can we do? Every­one read­ing this post has an oblig­a­tion to do our part to boost vot­er turnout. That means going above and beyond vot­ing our­selves. It means check­ing up on friends and fam­i­ly and ask­ing them to do their civic duty.

We are blessed to live in a demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic where we get to choose our lead­ers as opposed to an author­i­tar­i­an regime where we have no voice and no vote in our gov­er­nance. Vot­ing is an impor­tant oblig­a­tion of citizenship.

There are no accept­able excus­es for not vot­ing, espe­cial­ly not when three weeks are pro­vid­ed to fill out and return bal­lots, which is the case here in Washington.

So please: Talk to your col­leagues, fam­i­ly, and friends about tomor­row’s elec­tion. Ask them if they’ve vot­ed. If they have, thank them.

And if they haven’t, offer to help them make a plan for vot­ing. Research shows that peo­ple are more like­ly to vote when they make a plan to vote.

Here’s the com­plete set of fig­ures for turnout in 2015 ver­sus 2017.

2015 turnout as of 9:45 AM the Mon­day before Elec­tion Day (11/02/2015)

2017 turnout as of 8 AM today (11/06/2017)