NPI's Cascadia Advocate

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

Tuesday, February 8th, 2022

February 2022 King County school levies are passing, except for one Riverview levy

Ear­ly Feb­ru­ary 2022 spe­cial elec­tion results are in here in Wash­ing­ton State’s most pop­u­lous coun­ty, and they look good for schools and essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices almost across the board, with only a cou­ple of exceptions.

Although par­tic­i­pa­tion is low, most of the mea­sures on the bal­lot do not have min­i­mum turnout or three-fifths affir­ma­tive vote require­ment because they are school levies. The thresh­old for pas­sage is just a sim­ple major­i­ty of those present and vot­ing. And with only one excep­tion, every levy is clear­ing that bar.

Twen­ty-sev­en propo­si­tions were on the bal­lot: twen­ty-six levy mea­sures and one bond mea­sure, in the mul­ti-coun­ty Northshore School District.

Of the levy mea­sures, the only one that is not pass­ing is Riverview Propo­si­tion 1, the replace­ment edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams and oper­a­tions levy. How­ev­er, Riverview’s oth­er propo­si­tion, a replace­ment Tech­nol­o­gy and cap­i­tal projects levy, is passing.

The returns on the Riverview mea­sures are as follows:

Riverview School Dis­trict No. 407
Bal­lots Count­ed: 4,199
Reg­is­tered Vot­ers: 15,647
Turnout: 26.84%

Propo­si­tion No. 1
Yes: 2,043 votes (48.70%)
No: 2,152 votes (51.30%)

Propo­si­tion No. 2
Yes: 2,177 votes (51.92%)
No: 2,016 votes (48.08%)

Propo­si­tion 1 is only down by one hun­dred and nine votes, so there’s a chance it could still pass if late bal­lots cast by dis­trict vot­ers are pro-education.

And con­verse­ly, some of the levies that are ahead are bare­ly so and the out­comes could change. Fed­er­al Way, for exam­ple, has a levy that is only pass­ing by two votes: Propo­si­tion 2 has 6,773 votes for and 6,771 votes against. That one could ulti­mate­ly go either way. Enum­claw has a levy that’s pass­ing with 51.40% of the vote, and Kent has one that’s pass­ing with 51.83%.

The King Coun­ty por­tion of the Fife School Dis­trict is actu­al­ly vot­ing down its two levies, but since most of the dis­trict is in Pierce Coun­ty, and the larg­er Pierce por­tion is in favor of the levies, they’re win­ning. The mul­ti-coun­ty results for Propo­si­tion #1 are here and those for Propo­si­tion #2 are here.

Levies in oth­er dis­tricts were pass­ing with two-to-one and three-to-one mar­gins. In Seat­tle, over three-fifths of vot­ers were sup­port­ing their local levies. Mer­cer Island has 70%+ sup­port for its levies. Belle­vue has three-fifths sup­port for its levies, while Lake Wash­ing­ton’s levies are get­ting sup­port in the mid-fifties.

Mean­while, Northshore has a bond mea­sure that needs a six­ty per­cent affir­ma­tive vote and forty per­cent min­i­mum turnout to pass. That mea­sure is just short of the six­ty per­cent thresh­old in mul­ti-coun­ty results right now. It would need to climb above 60% yes to have a chance. We’ll see if that hap­pens in the late ballots.

The min­i­mum turnout require­ment is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly tied to the turnout in the last gen­er­al elec­tion, which hap­pened to be the third worst turnout in state his­to­ry, so the dis­trict ought to be able to clear the min­i­mum turnout requirement.

Northshore School Dis­trict No. 417
Mul­ti-coun­ty results

Propo­si­tion #2
Yes: 12,048 votes (59.93%)
No: 8,057 (40.07%)

The King por­tion of Northshore is pro­vid­ing the req­ui­site three-fifths sup­port, but the Sno­homish por­tion is lag­ging, with only 58.61% vot­ing Approved.

Count­ing is set to con­tin­ue until Feb­ru­ary 18th, when the results of the spe­cial elec­tion will be cer­ti­fied. There will be eight more tab­u­la­tions after this.

NPI thanks every vot­er who took the time to par­tic­i­pate in this spe­cial elec­tion Our fur­ther thanks to every­one who joined us in vot­ing yes for our schools.

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