It’s Top Two Election Day in Washington State – don’t forget to vote!

Read­ers, a reminder that today is the last day of the August 2019 Top Two Elec­tion, the elim­i­na­tion round of our dys­func­tion­al two-part gen­er­al elec­tion sys­tem. Bal­lots must be post­marked or returned by a drop box by 8 PM tonight, or they won’t count. Be sure yours is in, and then remind friends and fam­i­ly to vote, too. Chances are, many of them haven’t. Don’t assume – ask!

Par­tic­i­pa­tion so far in this elec­tion has been pret­ty low. As of yes­ter­day after­noon, statewide turnout stood at 18.8%. King Coun­ty’s turnout is slight­ly above the statewide per­cent­age at 19.2%, con­tin­u­ing a recent trend of

Pierce and Sno­homish (the state’s next largest coun­ties) are real­ly, real­ly lag­ging behind — as they were last year and in oth­er recent years.

Pierce’s turnout is a piti­ful 13%, while Sno­homish isn’t far­ing much bet­ter at 13.6%. Both coun­ties are dead last in the state as a whole for turnout.

Island Coun­ty cur­rent­ly has the best turnout, although it has only twen­ty-four vot­ers in its Top Two uni­verse. Four­teen of those vot­ers have participated.

Tiny Colum­bia Coun­ty in south­east Wash­ing­ton has the next best turnout, with 42.2% of bal­lots returned. On its heels are Fer­ry and Adams coun­ties, which are also very small, at 37.4% and 36.9%. Of the coun­ties with a pop­u­la­tion that’s well into five dig­its, Mason has the best turnout, com­ing in at 30%.

The team at NPI urges you to be a vot­er and get your bal­lot in. If you would like to use a drop box to return your bal­lot, here is a list of loca­tions for major counties:

• King Coun­ty
• Sno­homish County
• Pierce Coun­ty
• What­com County
• Skag­it County
• Thurston Coun­ty
• Spokane Coun­ty
• Clark Coun­ty

Need help vot­ing? NPI doesn’t endorse or rate can­di­dates for office, but the Pro­gres­sive Voter’s Guide is avail­able if you want to learn more about who’s on your bal­lot. You can also use the offi­cial voter’s pam­phlet pub­lished by your coun­ty. And for judi­cial races, there’s VotingForJudges.org.

Start­ing tonight, after 8 PM, we will be offer­ing live cov­er­age of elec­tion results here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. Most coun­ties will only report one batch of results tonight, and not update again till tomor­row afternoon.

We will be watch­ing a num­ber of races close­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Seat­tle and Belle­vue city coun­cil races, the King Coun­ty Parks For All levy, and the spe­cial elec­tion in the 40th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, where fields of can­di­dates of three or more are com­pet­ing for just two spots each on the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion ballot.