Reagan Dunn and Jason Rantz are wrong: Moving county elections to even years won’t hurt public discourse at the local level

This month, the King Coun­ty Coun­cil will be tak­ing up an NPI pro­pos­al intro­duced by Chair Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci to move reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled elec­tions for Exec­u­tive, Asses­sor, Elec­tions Direc­tor, and Coun­ty Coun­cil to even-num­bered years.

If approved by the Coun­cil, the ordi­nance would be placed on the Novem­ber bal­lot for vot­ers’ con­sid­er­a­tion. Rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the ordi­nance would ensure that begin­ning in the lat­ter half of the 2020s, all King Coun­ty posi­tions are elect­ed in years when majori­ties of vot­ers con­sis­tent­ly turn out, as opposed to the bifur­cat­ed sys­tem we have now, where only Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney is elect­ed in an even-num­bered year and the oth­er posi­tions are elect­ed in odd-num­bered years.

Chair Bal­duc­ci filed the char­ter amend­ment last Thurs­day and it got referred to com­mit­tee today. In between now and then, The Seat­tle Times ran a well-report­ed front page sto­ry on the amend­ment by reporter David Gut­man, which explains what the pro­pos­al would do and why it would be beneficial.

An oppos­ing per­spec­tive is pro­vid­ed at the end of the arti­cle by Repub­li­can Rea­gan Dunn, a mem­ber of the Coun­cil who is run­ning against Kim Schri­er for Con­gress in the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict. Dunn is one of two Repub­li­cans left on the Coun­cil, along with vet­er­an Pete von Reich­bauer from Fed­er­al Way.

Here are the pas­sages in which Dunn argues against our amendment:

Coun­cilmem­ber Rea­gan Dunn plans to oppose the change, argu­ing that local races would be deprived of atten­tion. Dunn also wor­ried about mak­ing an already long bal­lot longer, increas­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that vot­ers will leave races at the bot­tom of the bal­lot blank.

“You move it to even-year elec­tions, fed­er­al issues will eclipse local issues because that’s where all the mon­ey is spent, that’s where the atten­tion goes,” said Dunn, who is run­ning for the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict seat this year. “And peo­ple for­get to talk about things like home­less­ness, land use, crime and transportation.”

He also wor­ries about local cam­paigns hav­ing to com­pete for TV or radio time with fed­er­al cam­paigns, when adver­tis­ing rates are much higher.

“That’s an incum­bent pro­tec­tion plan to me,” Dunn said. “It’s peo­ple with exist­ing name iden­ti­fi­ca­tion that are going to win those elections.”

Today, Dunn appeared on right wing talk radio to crit­i­cize the amend­ment at greater length, field­ing soft­ball ques­tions from host Jason Rantz, who some­times appears on Rupert Mur­doch’s FNC to engage in Seat­tle-bash­ing and who is quite proud that he once scored an inter­view with wannabe dic­ta­tor Don­ald Trump.

Here’s a tran­script of their ini­tial exchange:

JASON RANTZ: Join­ing me on the line is Rea­gan Dunn, Rea­gan. Wel­come back to the show.

REAGAN DUNN: Thanks for hav­ing me.

JASON RANTZ: You are oppos­ing this effort by your col­league, Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci. Take us through why?

REAGAN DUNN: Well, you know, obvi­ous­ly, it’s spon­sored by the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, designed to win elec­tions for Democ­rats by using the pres­i­den­tial year and then those major midterm elec­tions where sen­a­tors and con­gress­peo­ple are on the bal­lot to try and increase their turnout and over­run the Repub­li­cans vot­ing in the sub­ur­ban dis­tricts. That’s one reason.

But the biggest rea­son is this: Nobody is talk­ing about local issues in these big fed­er­al cam­paigns. You got home­less­ness, you’ve got crime, you’ve got trans­porta­tion, traf­fic, uh, all the things that peo­ple care about — land use. And if you fed­er­al­ize an elec­tion, even years, you’re going to have all the fed­er­al offices above elect­ed pres­i­dent, Sen­ate, House, the sev­en statewide offices like the gov­er­nor or attor­ney gen­er­al, all the way down. [Note: There are actu­al­ly nine elect­ed statewide elect­ed offices in the exec­u­tive depart­ment, not sev­en, as Rea­gan said on Rantz’s show.]

And final­ly, maybe, the vot­ers have the patience and time, they’ll come back down to these local coun­ty races. And by then, if they’re, if they’re still vot­ing, they’re not going to know what issues are being dis­cussed because they’ll be eclipsed at the fed­er­al level.

JASON RANTZ: Yeah, there’s just too much going on at once. I don’t think any­one can rea­son­ably claim that even the media or just from an ad per­spec­tive of avail­able ad time, that you can effec­tive­ly cov­er the pres­i­den­tial, con­gres­sion­al races, may­oral races, coun­ty coun­cil, the coun­ty exec­u­tive, the pros­e­cu­tor, the school boards, the judges. Oh, and then on top of that, you’ve got all these oth­er small­er things that usu­al­ly do ben­e­fit from some extra time to actu­al­ly spend focused on them. There’s… there’s just no way that that’s possible.

REAGAN DUNN: Yeah, there isn’t. And I ran for attor­ney gen­er­al ten years ago and the drop off on the pres­i­dent all the way down… I was ninth on the bal­lot then. That has to go through the fed­er­al. And then you come down final­ly through all the statewide races to get to attor­ney gen­er­al. And even then, there was a huge amount of vot­er drop-off. Lit­er­al­ly, peo­ple start throw­ing out the bal­lots when they got down. But the thing about these off-year elec­tions… you could focus in on go deep on home­less­ness, on crime, on land use pol­i­cy, and munic­i­pal… relat­ed issues.

There’s quite a bit here to unpack, so let’s get start­ed, shall we?

Why we’re doing this

First, with respect to our moti­va­tion, Rea­gan Dunn is wrong that our goal in bring­ing this amend­ment for­ward is to make it eas­i­er to elect Democrats.

Our actu­al objec­tive is to lis­ten to what vot­ers have been telling us for many years and sim­pli­fy our sys­tem of elec­tions. Most vot­ers do not want to be sent a bal­lot up to four times every year. Their pref­er­ence is abun­dant­ly clear: they’d rather have few­er elec­tions with longer bal­lots than more elec­tions with short­er ballots.

By mov­ing coun­ty elec­tions to even-num­bered years, we can as much as dou­ble the num­ber of peo­ple who are reg­u­lar­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in choos­ing their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Just as impor­tant­ly, we’ll end up with a coun­ty elec­torate that is not only larg­er, but more diverse, which would be a boon for democracy.

Hilar­i­ous­ly, after mak­ing the com­ments excerpt­ed above, Dunn pro­ceed­ed to use the extreme­ly prob­lem­at­ic phrase “off year elec­tion” not once but sev­er­al times, unin­ten­tion­al­ly under­cut­ting his own argu­ment and prov­ing just how entrenched in our polit­i­cal cul­ture the atti­tude is that only even-years count.

If odd years are indeed “off years,” which implies peo­ple need­n’t turn out, then why are we elect­ing crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant local offices in those years!?

Democrats are already electorally dominant in King County

As Dunn is aware, Democ­rats are already elec­toral­ly dom­i­nant in King Coun­ty under the cur­rent sys­tem that we have and don’t need this amend­ment to obtain an elec­toral edge. In the year with the sec­ond worst gen­er­al elec­tion turnout in state his­to­ry (2015), the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty suc­ceed­ed in flip­ping the 6th King Coun­ty Coun­cil Dis­trict with Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci, and last year (2021), the par­ty repeat­ed the feat in the 3rd Coun­cil Dis­trict with Sarah Per­ry. 2021 hap­pens to have been the year with the third worst gen­er­al elec­tion turnout in state history.

Sev­en mem­bers of the nine mem­ber Coun­cil now iden­ti­fy as Democ­rats along with the Asses­sor and the Exec­u­tive. (The incum­bent Elec­tions Direc­tor, Julie Wise, who is sup­port­ive of our amend­ment, is not aligned with any party.)

In addi­tion to their recent suc­cess in com­pet­i­tive coun­cil elec­tions, Democ­rats have won every sin­gle Exec­u­tive elec­tion in King Coun­ty since the 1990s.

Can­di­dates like David Irons and Susan Hutchi­son have repeat­ed­ly lost to Democ­rats like Ron Sims and Dow Con­stan­tine. Hutchi­son lost after Repub­li­cans suc­ceed­ed in push­ing their own char­ter amend­ment in 2008 that made coun­ty elec­tions “non­par­ti­san,” which was explic­it­ly intend­ed to help Republicans.

Last year, Repub­li­cans did­n’t even both­er recruit­ing a cred­i­ble can­di­date to chal­lenge Con­stan­tine for Exec­u­tive. That result­ed in Con­stan­ti­ne’s gen­er­al elec­tion oppo­nent being anoth­er Demo­c­rat: State Sen­a­tor Joe Nguyen.

The lone coun­ty­wide office in Repub­li­can hands for many years was that of Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney, held by Norm Maleng’s suc­ces­sor Dan Satterberg.

How­ev­er, after Trump was installed in the Oval Office, Sat­ter­berg declared him­self a Demo­c­rat and dumped the Repub­li­can Par­ty. He ran for reelec­tion as Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney in 2018 with Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty support.

The days when Repub­li­cans were com­pet­i­tive across King Coun­ty as a whole have dis­ap­peared into the rearview mir­ror. The last footholds that Repub­li­cans have in coun­ty gov­ern­ment are in the two dis­tricts in the south­ern part of the coun­ty that are cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ed by Dunn and von Reichbauer.

Regard­less of whether our char­ter amend­ment pass­es or not, it’s like­ly just a mat­ter of time before those dis­tricts also flip. Under our pro­pos­al, which has a three-year tran­si­tion peri­od, there would not be even-year elec­tions for Coun­cil in either Dunn or von Reich­bauer’s dis­tricts until 2028. That is six years away. It’s like­ly that von Reich­bauer will have retired by then, and as for Dunn, he is clear­ly eager to move on from the Coun­cil to anoth­er gig — like Congress.

So, again, Democ­rats don’t need this char­ter amend­ment to gain an advan­tage in King Coun­ty elec­tions. They already have one! And it’s pos­si­ble that by the time this amend­ment is imple­ment­ed, all nine coun­cil seats will be Demo­c­ra­t­ic, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly been flipped blue in a series of odd-num­bered years. The rea­son to do this isn’t to help Democ­rats win, it’s to make coun­ty elec­tions more inclusive.

Longer ballots aren’t going to hurt response rates

We can see from look­ing at data going back many years that more vot­ers vote a com­plete or most­ly com­plete bal­lot in even-num­bered years than vote for any­thing at all in odd years. In 2021, less than half of King Coun­ty vot­ers cast a bal­lot, where­as in 2020, almost nine in ten vot­ers participated.

In 2020, the posi­tion fur­thest down the bal­lot that spanned all of King Coun­ty was Supe­ri­or Court Posi­tion #30, a judi­cial office. This con­test appeared on the reverse side of the bal­lot as there was­n’t room for it on the front.

There were two can­di­dates vying for that post: Doug North and Car­olyn Ladd. They and write-in can­di­dates col­lec­tive­ly received a total of 982,814 votes, less than twen­ty thou­sand votes shy of a mil­lion total.

Con­trast that with the response rate for the top item on the 2021 bal­lot, which was one of Tim Eyman’s push polls. Only 580,471 vot­ers marked an oval in response to that push poll. That is a dif­fer­ence of more than 400,000 voters!

Thanks to our friend Scott Shaw­croft, we’ve got a chart that shows the response rates across elec­tion types. It’s a huge chart, but it’ll give you an idea of what I’m talk­ing about here. Our thanks to Scott for his assis­tance in build­ing this!

Pick pret­ty much any even year ver­sus pret­ty much any odd year, and what you’ll find is that down­bal­lot response rates in even years exceed the top of the tick­et response rates in odd years. So Rea­gan Dun­n’s con­cern that that “vot­ers will leave races at the bot­tom of the bal­lot blank” is unfound­ed. As I said above, vot­ers pre­fer longer bal­lots in even-years to the sys­tem we have now.

If Dunn and oth­ers are real­ly con­cerned about bal­lot length, then they should join us in lob­by­ing to abol­ish Tim Eyman’s waste­ful, decep­tive, and fraud­u­lent push polls, which are not bind­ing yet illic­it­ly mas­quer­ade as real bal­lot mea­sures. We have leg­is­la­tion to get rid of the blast­ed things which will return in 2023.

We could also con­vert some of the thou­sands of obscure local offices that reg­u­lar­ly aren’t con­test­ed to become appoint­ed posi­tions rather than elect­ed ones. That would fur­ther short­en the bal­lot and sim­pli­fy our elections.

Discourse on local issues isn’t going to be impaired

At NPI, we believe in inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty. We are the oppo­site of a sin­gle-issue orga­ni­za­tion. We believe that all issues are con­nect­ed, and we believe that mak­ing progress across mul­ti­ple issues at once is a wor­thy endeavor.

To hear Rea­gan Dunn tell it, fed­er­al and local issues are dis­con­nect­ed from each oth­er. Well, that’s non­sense. Dunn con­tends that if King Coun­ty elec­tions get moved to even num­bered years, then dis­course on local issues will suffer.

We emphat­i­cal­ly disagree.

Housing/homelessness, land use, pub­lic safe­ty, trans­porta­tion, and edu­ca­tion are impor­tant fed­er­al and state as well as local issues. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden dis­cussed them all in his most recent State of the Union pre­cise­ly because they are so uni­ver­sal. The notion that coun­ty can­di­dates are going to for­get to talk about impor­tant issues because they’re run­ning along­side fed­er­al and state can­di­dates is laugh­able. We’re elect­ing a Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney in King Coun­ty this year, and the can­di­dates are cer­tain­ly not for­get­ting to talk about crime and pub­lic safety!

For­mer House Speak­er Tip O’Neill pop­u­lar­ized the say­ing that all pol­i­tics is local in the 1980s. Peo­ple have argued more recent­ly that all pol­i­tics is nation­al and all pol­i­tics is Trump — and if you watch cable news enough, it can cer­tain­ly feel that way. But place clear­ly still mat­ters to peo­ple, even in this dig­i­tal era. It’s why hyper­local news sites like the West Seat­tle Blog, Nextdoor, and neigh­bor­hood Face­book dis­cus­sion groups are fre­quent­ly buzzing with conversation.

Rather than get­ting drowned out, local con­cerns will be lift­ed up if more local elec­tions share a bal­lot with fed­er­al and state elec­tions. With more media cov­er­age and more vot­ing, democ­ra­cy at the local lev­el will be more vibrant.

The fact that spe­cial elec­tions for local offices in even years attract more vot­ers than reg­u­lar­ly held elec­tions for those posts in odd years illus­trates this point.

The sen­ti­ment expressed by Dunn and Rantz today on KTTH isn’t new — decades ago, the argu­ment was made that local elec­tions would ben­e­fit from stand­ing on their own in years when fed­er­al and state offices weren’t on the ballot.

And that argu­ment prevailed.

We have now tried their approach for sev­er­al decades and the evi­dence is in: it isn’t work­ing. Most peo­ple are telling us, by reg­u­lar­ly not vot­ing every oth­er year, that they do not care for this bifur­cat­ed sys­tem of elections.

Talk show hosts like Rantz and career politi­cians like Dunn may not see any­thing wrong with con­tin­u­ing the sta­tus quo, but most vot­ers are not insid­ers like them.

At NPI, we believe we need to lis­ten and act on peo­ple’s concerns.

We believe that by switch­ing King Coun­ty’s elec­tions to even-num­bered years, we’ll see a rich­er and more robust dis­course about local issues because more peo­ple allo­cate time to think and talk about pol­i­tics dur­ing those cycles.

What about the cost to reach voters through paid ads?

The one con­cern Dunn has voiced thus far that we con­sid­er legit­i­mate is that it will prob­a­bly cost more for coun­ty-lev­el cam­paigns to pur­chase tele­vi­sion and radio adver­tis­ing in even-num­bered years. We share this con­cern, but we think the advan­tages of mak­ing the switch to even years off­set this drawback.

If we make the jump, new doors will open for our coun­ty-lev­el can­di­dates. For exam­ple, they’ll be able to make cam­paign appear­ances at events like par­ty cau­cus­es and con­ven­tions that typ­i­cal­ly aren’t held in odd-num­bered years, and they’ll ben­e­fit from increased polit­i­cal cov­er­age by media out­lets. And, to the extent per­mit­ted by law, they’ll be able to joint­ly fundraise or can­vass with high­er pro­file state and fed­er­al can­di­dates that attract more donors and volunteers.

Concluding thoughts

It has been over ten years since a major­i­ty of vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton turned out in an odd-num­bered year to vote. The trend is clear: most vot­ers pre­fer to turn out in even-num­bered years only. That’s when they pay atten­tion and that’s when they’re inter­est­ed in mak­ing deci­sions about who rep­re­sents them.

Our char­ter amend­ment both acknowl­edges and acts on vot­ers’ preferences.

If coun­ty elec­tions move to even-num­bered years, they will ben­e­fit from being held at times when far greater num­bers of peo­ple are civically-minded.

Those of us who care deeply about pol­i­tics — who live and breathe it — know that every elec­tion mat­ters. We turn out and do our civic duty no mat­ter what year it is or what else is going on in our lives. But most of our friends, col­leagues, and neigh­bors aren’t fol­low­ing suit, even though they are for­tu­nate enough to live in a state where the bal­lot comes to you, where you have three weeks to vote, and where every post office is effec­tive­ly a drop box thanks to pre­paid postage.

We have done great work on knock­ing down bar­ri­ers to vot­ing in Wash­ing­ton — and over right wing oppo­si­tion, too. Now it’s time to address the twin prob­lem of elec­tion fatigue by sim­pli­fy­ing our elec­tions. NPI’s research has pre­vi­ous­ly found that a major­i­ty of vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton sup­port phas­ing out odd-year elec­tions, while only a quar­ter are opposed. That’s a 2:1 mar­gin of sup­port to opposition.

If we make this change, we will be in very good com­pa­ny. The vast major­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s thir­ty-nine coun­ties already elect coun­ty lev­el offices in even-num­bered years and have for decades. Only three of the state’s sev­en char­ter coun­ties go in odd years: King, Sno­homish, and What­com. The oth­ers (Pierce, Clal­lam, Clark, and San Juan), do their elect­ing in even years.

After fifty years, it’s clear that the elec­toral sys­tem we have just isn’t work­ing for most vot­ers. So let’s give the peo­ple a chance to make a change. By putting this char­ter amend­ment on the Novem­ber bal­lot, we’ll fos­ter a need­ed con­ver­sa­tion about elec­tion fatigue and give vot­ers the pow­er to do some­thing about it.