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 2021 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 evening statewide turnout stood at 17.36%. That’s below where turnout was at the com­pa­ra­ble point two years ago, on the eve of the August 2019 Top Two elec­tion. That means we’ll need high­er final-day turnout just to be on par with what turnout was two years ago when it was in the high twenties.

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, which we strong­ly rec­om­mend — Louis DeJoy’s sab­o­tage of the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice has made USPS less reli­able — 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 city­wide races, the King Coun­ty Best Starts for Kids levy, and also coun­cil races in cities like Belle­vue, Spokane, Sequim, and Vancouver.