February 12th election results: Big majorities back levies for Seattle, Renton schools

King Coun­ty Elec­tions has just released pre­lim­i­nary results for the Feb­ru­ary 12th spe­cial elec­tion, and the num­bers so far are good across the board for Seat­tle and Ren­ton Pub­lic Schools. Seat­tle vot­ers are giv­ing a big thumbs up to both of their levies (an oper­at­ing levy and a cap­i­tal levy), while vot­ers in greater Ren­ton are say­ing yes to pro­posed con­struc­tion bonds as well as an oper­a­tions levy.

The two Seat­tle levies and the Ren­ton levy appear des­tined for passage.

Seat­tle Propo­si­tion #1 enjoys 65.81% sup­port right now, with 34.19% opposed. That’s the oper­a­tions levy. Seat­tle Propo­si­tion #2 enjoys 68.19% sup­port, with 31.81% opposed. (The Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al board had urged a wide­ly-ridiculed no vote on Propo­si­tion #1 and a yes vote on Propo­si­tion #2.)

In Ren­ton, Propo­si­tion #2 has 59.80% sup­port and oppo­si­tion of 40.20%.

As set forth in the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion, the thresh­old is a sim­ple major­i­ty of those vot­ing and all of these levies are clear­ing that bar with no trouble.

Ren­ton’s con­struc­tion bonds are anoth­er mat­ter. To pass, the con­struc­tion bonds have to sat­is­fy what’s called the six­ty forty (60/40) rule. The bonds must receive a 60% yes vote with min­i­mum turnout of 18,578 vot­ers (40%).

If both require­ments are not met, the bond mea­sure will not pass. Like levies, the thresh­old for pas­sage of bonds is spec­i­fied in the Wash­ing­ton State Constitution.

Right now, the bonds are clear­ing the first hur­dle… bare­ly. 60.11% of bal­lots cast so far on the bond mea­sure are in favor. How­ev­er, turnout stands at only 16.86%. Turnout will need to more than dou­ble in order for the bonds to pass.

We think the six­ty forty rule for bonds should be abol­ished, but such a change would require amend­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion. An amend­ment to do just that has been intro­duced and is being con­sid­ered by the Leg­is­la­ture. The House ver­sion is House Joint Res­o­lu­tion 4203 and the Sen­ate ver­sion is Sen­ate Joint Res­o­lu­tion 8201.

We encour­age you to con­tact your leg­is­la­tors and let them know you sup­port HJR 4203 and SJR 8201. You can track its progress through the leg­isla­tive process with our State­house Bill Track­er, which is always at your ser­vice on NPI’s web­site.