King County Council sends even-year elections charter amendment to voters!

It’s offi­cial: Vot­ers across Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Coun­ty will get the oppor­tu­ni­ty this autumn to decide whether the coun­ty ought to align elec­tions for all of its offices in even-num­bered years instead of elect­ing many key posi­tions in odd years. By a vote of 7–2, the Coun­cil adopt­ed Ordi­nance 2022–0180, which (if rat­i­fied) would change the coun­ty’s plan of gov­ern­ment to stip­u­late that Exec­u­tive, Asses­sor, Elec­tions Direc­tor, and Coun­cil posi­tions be elect­ed in even years.

Con­ceived by our team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, spon­sored by Coun­cil Chair Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci, and cham­pi­oned by a grow­ing coali­tion that includes the League of Women Vot­ers of Seat­tle-King Coun­ty, More Equi­table Democ­ra­cy, Wash­ing­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Alliance, Somos Mujeres Lati­nas, Urban League of Met­ro­pol­i­tan Seat­tle, Share the Cities, Asian Coun­sel­ing and Refer­ral Ser­vice, and the Sight­line Insti­tute, Ordi­nance 2022–0180 is designed to strength­en our democ­ra­cy and make impor­tant local elec­tions more inclusive.

It has been over a decade since King Coun­ty saw major­i­ty turnout in an odd-year elec­tion. But in even years, the coun­ty reg­u­lar­ly sees turnout of over 80% (in pres­i­den­tial years) or 70% (in midterm years).

Just by switch­ing the tim­ing, we can as much as dou­ble turnout in elec­tions for coun­ty lev­el offices, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly diver­si­fy turnout, too. That will result — as I said in tes­ti­mo­ny deliv­ered to the Coun­cil today in cham­bers! — in a coun­ty gov­ern­ment that is bet­ter con­nect­ed to the peo­ple it is sup­posed to serve.

Our team at NPI is pro­found­ly grate­ful to Chair Bal­duc­ci for intro­duc­ing this amend­ment and enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pro­pelling it through the leg­isla­tive process. Thanks to her and Coun­cilmem­bers Dem­bows­ki, Zahi­lay, Per­ry, Upthe­grove, Kohl-Welles, and McDer­mott, vot­ers in King Coun­ty will get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to decide what kind of elec­tion sys­tem we want our coun­ty to have in the years ahead.

We can stick with the bro­ken sta­tus quo, in which cru­cial­ly impor­tant offices are vot­ed on in “off years’ that are implied by name to be unim­por­tant (note that we avoid the use of that term here at NPI except to crit­i­cize it!), or we can make a change. We can vote to start doing what near­ly every coun­ty in Wash­ing­ton State already does: hold reg­u­lar elec­tions for coun­ty offices in even years, when high pro­file state and fed­er­al posi­tions are also on the ballot.

As Chair Bal­duc­ci has said, the data under­pin­ning the case for the switch is extreme­ly com­pelling. I not­ed back in Novem­ber right here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate that the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, which fea­tured sev­en char­ter amend­ments sub­mit­ted by the Coun­cil to the peo­ple, attract­ed twice as many vot­ers as the sub­se­quent elec­tion for Exec­u­tive the fol­low­ing year.

1.1 mil­lion votes were cast for and against each of those amend­ments, some of which were tech­ni­cal in nature. But in the Exec­u­tive elec­tion a year lat­er, only 572,911 votes were cast for the two final­ists, Dow Con­stan­tine and Joe Nguyen.

And that was­n’t because vot­ers did­n’t care who rep­re­sents them. They do! Most peo­ple are just not in the habit of vot­ing every year. Put local offices on an even year bal­lot, and most peo­ple will take the time and effort to vote on those offices. That is exact­ly what this amend­ment does. It’s sim­ple, it’s straight­for­ward, and it address­es the very real con­cern about elec­tion fatigue that vot­ers have.

Oppo­nents of our char­ter amend­ment appear invest­ed in main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo (what we have is what we have, etc.) and have tried out var­i­ous bad argu­ments against the amend­ment, hop­ing to find some­thing that will stick.

Crit­ics like Coun­cilmem­ber Rea­gan Dunn (a Repub­li­can, who vot­ed no, along with Coun­cilmem­ber Pete von Reich­bauer) have claimed, for exam­ple, that imple­ment­ing this switch will result in local issues get­ting buried beneath state and fed­er­al issues. But this argu­ment does­n’t make sense.

The “local issues” Dunn cites, like home­less­ness and hous­ing, tran­sit and trans­porta­tion, or crime and pub­lic safe­ty, are all state and fed­er­al issues as well as local issues. They’re not going to get buried in a midterm or pres­i­den­tial year.

Quite the con­trary: because even-year elec­tions are bet­ter cov­ered by the media and because a lot more peo­ple pay more atten­tion to elec­toral pol­i­tics in even years, they’re more like­ly to learn about coun­ty gov­ern­ment and what it does if can­di­dates for coun­ty office are run­ning in even years.

It’s a fact that a huge num­ber of peo­ple are not cur­rent­ly engag­ing in odd years, so nobody can cred­i­bly argue that “local issues” are going to be hurt from a switch to even years. Any­one who wants the work of King Coun­ty’s gov­ern­ment to be front and cen­ter and top of mind should be sup­port­ing this amendment.

Relat­ed­ly, Dunn also sug­gest­ed today in his final com­ments before the Coun­cil’s vote that more vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a good thing because those addi­tion­al vot­ers might not be cast­ing informed votes. Ridicu­lous.

You might think that a can­di­date for high­er office this year — Dunn wants to replace Kim Schri­er in Con­gress as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the 8th Dis­trict — would refrain from insult­ing vot­ers in pub­lic, but, well, you’d be wrong.

Then there’s the argu­ment that response rates will suf­fer if these offices are put on an even year bal­lot. That does­n’t hold water, either. We can see from look­ing at response rates going back many years that down­bal­lot items in even years con­sis­tent­ly get a bet­ter response than top of the tick­et items in odd years.

We do appre­ci­ate Dun­n’s con­ces­sion today that our amend­ment is “thought­ful” and “well inten­tioned.” After what he pre­vi­ous­ly said about our pro­pos­al, I was­n’t expect­ing that char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, but it was real­ly nice to hear those words.

At NPI, we believe in inclu­sion and in bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er. We believe our democ­ra­cy is stronger and robust when every­body par­tic­i­pates. Schemes to sup­press the vote and rig elec­tions are at odds with those val­ues and goals, as are efforts to defeat reforms that would lib­er­ate us from the sta­tus quo.

Decades of data demon­strate that elec­tions for offices like Exec­u­tive, Asses­sor, Elec­tions Direc­tor, and Coun­cil are not ben­e­fit­ing from being rel­e­gat­ed to bal­lots in odd years, or local elec­tion years, as we have also tak­en to call­ing them.

We have tried the exist­ing approach for over fifty years.

It isn’t work­ing. Peo­ple just aren’t turn­ing out. Five of the ten worst gen­er­al elec­tion turnouts in state his­to­ry have been in the last ten years.

2017 was the worst turnout in his­to­ry so far.

2015 was the sec­ond worst.

2021 was the third worst.

And so on.

The prin­ci­ple of if it ain’t broke sim­ply does­n’t apply here because the sys­tem is, in fact, bro­ken. The trend is very clear and extreme­ly unlike­ly to change.

It’s time that we end­ed a failed experiment.

It’s time we start­ed work­ing to imple­ment a switch to even-year elections.

Our research has found that majori­ties in both the state as a whole and in King Coun­ty are ready to make the switch. At least at the coun­ty lev­el, vot­ers are soon going to get that chance. We are com­mit­ted to ensur­ing this char­ter amend­ment gets the pub­lic con­sid­er­a­tion it deserves. If you are inter­est­ed in join­ing the coali­tion to pass what will soon be known as King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1, please get in touch with us. We would love to have your involvement.

Let the cam­paign begin!