NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, November 6th, 2019

Thurston and Island counties defy Tim Eyman, swing into the NO on I‑976 column

Today was the sec­ond day of tab­u­la­tion in the Novem­ber 2019 gen­er­al elec­tion in Wash­ing­ton State, which remains an elec­tion in progress, as I stat­ed last night.

While our analy­sis sug­gests that Tim Eyman’s incred­i­bly destruc­tive I‑976 will still be ahead when all the bal­lots are count­ed (which is a shame), the updat­ed returns that were released today show us mov­ing in a pos­i­tive direction.

Tim Eyman will not fin­ish this elec­tion with the “phe­nom­e­nal” num­bers that had him in such a state of eupho­ria at the Belle­vue Hyatt last night.

Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling, the coali­tion that opposed I‑976, worked hard and coop­er­a­tive­ly to wage a vig­or­ous, full-throat­ed cam­paign against this destruc­tive mea­sure, and today’s results demon­strate that that work had an impact.

Last night, there were just four coun­ties oppos­ing I‑976: King, Jef­fer­son, San Juan, and What­com. But as of today, there are six! Rein­force­ments have arrived. Thurston Coun­ty and Island Coun­ty have joined the NO on I‑976 col­umn, prob­a­bly for good, thanks to new­ly tab­u­lat­ed bal­lots favor­ing the NO side.

Eyman’s share of the vote statewide has begun declin­ing as well.

As of Elec­tion Night, Eyman had 55.76% of the statewide vote. As of today, I‑976 had slipped to 55.07%. The ini­tia­tive will slide under 54% tomor­row, and maybe even under 53%. By Fri­day, Eyman will have lost even more ground.

Every day that we can reduce the share of the yes vote and increase the no vote is a good day. If we can’t defeat I‑976 at the bal­lot, we at least want to even the score to the great­est extent that we can. And it looks like we’re on our way to accom­plish­ing just that. Mean­while, plan­ning is under­way for a legal chal­lenge to con­tin­ue the bat­tle against Ini­tia­tive 976 in the courts.

Thurston and Island coun­ties were only nar­row­ly vot­ing for I‑976 as of last night, which is why we were able to flip them in the span of a sin­gle day.

There are two oth­er small coun­ties that are poten­tial­ly flip­pable: Clal­lam and Whit­man. In Clal­lam, the no vote is 48,78%. In Whit­man, the no vote is 48.14%. Whit­man has 2,500 bal­lots on hand await­ing pro­cess­ing and Clal­lam has 4,250. If there are enough NO votes in the yet-to-be-tab­u­lat­ed bal­lots, then the NO on I‑976 col­umn might get even big­ger by next week.

None of the big swing coun­ties are close enough to be flipped (that’d be Sno­homish, Pierce, Spokane, and Clark). There might be a chance of flip­ping Kit­sap, though. The NO vote there is cur­rent­ly 47.36% and climb­ing, and there are a sub­stan­tial num­ber of bal­lots left to count… 25,000.

If enough of those 25,000 bal­lots favor Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling’s posi­tion, Kit­sap might swing away from Eyman. Fin­gers crossed…

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