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…