Voter turnout surges in Washington with just over twenty-four hours to go; Oregon lags

Vot­er turnout in Wash­ing­ton (PDF) is eas­i­ly out­pac­ing the last midterm cycle four years ago and might even approach his­toric lev­els, if the most recent bal­lot return rates are any indi­ca­tion. As of this evening, 44.9% of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans reg­is­tered to vote had returned their bal­lots. This morn­ing, the num­ber was 40% — so, in the span of just eight hours, it went up by four per­cent. That’s big. On Elec­tion Night four years ago, only 31.32% of bal­lots across Wash­ing­ton State had been returned.

Wash­ing­ton’s turnout has rebound­ed to such a big degree this year that the Ever­green State has eclipsed Ore­gon, the pio­neer of vot­ing-at-home and a state that elects its gov­er­nor in midterm cycles. Only 39.8% of bal­lots had been returned across the Beaver State (PDF) is as of today’s update, where­as Wash­ing­ton is now in the mid-for­ties and like­ly to top 50% by tomor­row night.

Four years ago, Ore­gon had hit 49.9% the day before the election.

As of today, Mult­nom­ah Coun­ty — eas­i­ly Ore­gon’s largest pop­u­la­tion cen­ter and a key source of votes for Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates and pro­gres­sive caus­es — is now ahead of the state aver­age, with 40.1% of bal­lots returned.

The sto­ry is sim­i­lar up in Wash­ing­ton, where King Coun­ty is slight­ly ahead of the state as a whole at 46%. That was­n’t the case four years ago.

For years, Wash­ing­ton has grap­pled with declin­ing turnout across all types of elec­tions. The 2016 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, which Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict­ed would be a record break­er, saw less turnout than 2012 or 2008. Turnout in the 2014 midterms came nowhere close to 2010 lev­els, and turnout in the in-between local years got so bad that Wash­ing­ton set two records for the worst turnout in state his­to­ry in the span of just three years.

After last year’s embar­rass­ing­ly awful turnout, the Leg­is­la­ture final­ly got to work remov­ing bar­ri­ers to vot­ing, pass­ing the Access to Democ­ra­cy pack­age, which includes auto­mat­ic vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, pre­reg­is­tra­tion for six­teen and sev­en­teen year olds, same-day reg­is­tra­tion, and the Vot­ing Rights Act.

King Coun­ty then decid­ed to raise the bar even fur­ther and imple­ment pre­paid postage this year, prompt­ing Wyman and Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee to pool dis­cre­tionary funds from their office bud­gets to ensure the oth­er coun­ties could do like­wise.

Thanks in part to pre­paid postage for bal­lot return envelopes, turnout in the August Top Two elec­tion went up for the first time in years instead of down. Pre­paid postage is now help­ing dri­ve turnout in this gen­er­al election.

We are relieved that action has final­ly been tak­en to arrest and reverse our declin­ing vot­er turnout trend. But while this pos­i­tive momen­tum is wel­come, we can­not take it for grant­ed. Next year is a local elec­tion year with­out a U.S. Sen­ate race or any U.S. House races on the bal­lot, so it will take more work to cat­alyze vot­er turnout.

Turnout is not mere­ly a func­tion of what is on the bal­lot, as Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman has often incor­rect­ly stat­ed. Rather, it is one fac­tor that influ­ences turnout. There are oth­er fac­tors, one of which is bar­ri­ers to vot­ing. Wash­ing­ton has done a good job this year of tear­ing down a lot of those bar­ri­ers. But we could do more.

Wash­ing­ton law­mak­ers can also make vot­ers’ lives sim­pler and reduce vot­er fatigue by chang­ing state law to stream­line the elec­tions we hold.

Instead of hav­ing four elec­tion win­dows in a giv­en year (Feb­ru­ary, April, August, Novem­ber), we should go to two (May or June and Novem­ber). And to sim­pli­fy what’s on the bal­lot, we should end the prac­tice of con­sid­er­ing state-lev­el ini­tia­tives and ref­er­en­da in odd-num­bered years, since those are local elec­tion years.

These moves would also save mon­ey — par­tic­u­lar­ly for small cash-strapped coun­ties in East­ern Wash­ing­ton — in addi­tion to reduc­ing vot­er fatigue.

Speak­ing of coun­ties in East­ern Wash­ing­ton, Spokane deserves a huge kudos for being the first major coun­ty in the state to sur­pass 50% turnout. The big mile­stone hap­pened this morn­ing. Spokane Coun­ty has­n’t looked back: the coun­ty is now up to 52.7%, which is tru­ly impres­sive. Clark is also doing fair­ly well, with 47.0% in.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic hopes of cap­tur­ing WA-03 and WA-05 are depen­dent on robust turnout in pop­u­lous Clark and Spokane coun­ties, so these high return rates could bode well for Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lengers Car­olyn Long and Lisa Brown.

The state’s oth­er large coun­ties have some catch­ing up to do. Sno­homish only just reached 40.3%, and Pierce is even fur­ther behind at 36.6%. Thurston is bare­ly ahead of Pierce with 36.8%. As men­tioned, King is ahead of the curve with 46% turnout, and will like­ly pass 50% when it makes its first report tomorrow.

Only one coun­ty in Ore­gon has seen a major­i­ty of its vot­ers turn out yet, and that’s Grant (50.2%). Cur­ry, Wal­lowa, and Deschutes are close behind, with both at or over 48%. All of those coun­ties are fair­ly small — Grant only has 5,325 voters.

The state’s sec­ond largest coun­ty, Lane (home to Eugene), is see­ing about the same turnout as Mult­nom­ah so far… 40%. Oth­er big coun­ties are fur­ther behind: Mar­i­on Coun­ty stands at 36.3% and Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty is at 36.5%.

Mean­while, Clacka­mas Coun­ty — the third of the major coun­ties in the Port­land metro area besides Mult­nom­ah and Wash­ing­ton — has reached 41.6% turnout and is thus the cur­rent turnout leader among the pop­u­lous coun­ties in Oregon.

Unlike Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon has par­ty reg­is­tra­tion, so elec­tions offi­cials down there also break out their turnout sta­tis­tics by par­ty. 49.3% of eli­gi­ble Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers have returned bal­lots so far, and 49% of Repub­li­can vot­ers have done like­wise. 40.1% of inde­pen­dent vot­ers, mean­while, have returned ballots.

Turnout among non­af­fil­i­at­ed Ore­gon vot­ers is a measly 22.1%, while turnout for minor par­ty vot­ers ranges from 22.5% (Work­ing Fam­i­lies) to 38.7% (Pacif­ic Green), with the Lib­er­tar­i­ans and oth­ers in between.