A pro­posed change to King Coun­ty’s plan of gov­ern­ment that would align elec­tions for all coun­ty-lev­el offices in even-num­bered years is on track to go to vot­ers for poten­tial rat­i­fi­ca­tion this autumn after pass­ing out of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan King Coun­ty’s Com­mit­tee of the Whole today on a 7–2 vote.

Ordi­nance 2022–0180, con­ceived by our team at NPI and spon­sored by King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci, would move elec­tions for Exec­u­tive, Asses­sor, Elec­tions Direc­tor, and Coun­cil from odd years to even years, when turnout is high­er and much more diverse. The shift would be accom­plished by mak­ing the next set of terms for each of the afore­men­tioned posi­tions three years in length and then revert­ing back to four year terms thereafter.

If adopt­ed by vot­ers, the amend­ment would ensure that King Coun­ty’s future lead­ers are cho­sen by the many instead of by a few.

In recent years, odd year vot­er turnout has rarely exceed­ed 45%, but in even years, turnout is con­sis­tent­ly above 70%. The Coun­cil’s own non­par­ti­san staff not­ed in their assess­ment of Ordi­nance 2022–0180 that if past trends hold, we’ll see more robust turnout by mak­ing the switch to even-year elections.

“Whether Coun­cil wants to increase vot­er turnout for the elec­tion of these coun­ty offices is a pol­i­cy deci­sion for the Coun­cil to make,” the staff report declared.

Today, the Coun­cil decid­ed that it does want to make the most of an oppor­tu­ni­ty to increase and diver­si­fy vot­er turnout. Sev­en coun­cilmem­bers vot­ed to send Ordi­nance 2022–0180 out of com­mit­tee with a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion, tee­ing up a final vote in the Coun­cil on June 28th, while two coun­cilmem­bers vot­ed no.

The roll call was as follows:

Vot­ing Yea: Coun­cilmem­bers Rod Dem­bows­ki (D1), Gir­may Zahi­lay (D2), Sarah Per­ry (D3), Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D4), Dave Upthe­grove (D5), Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci, Joe McDer­mott (D8)

Vot­ing Nay: Coun­cilmem­bers Pete von Reich­bauer (D7), Rea­gan Dunn (D9)

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan King Coun­ty Coun­cil is offi­cial­ly “non­par­ti­san,” but the Coun­cil’s sev­en-mem­ber major­i­ty all iden­ti­fy as Democ­rats, while von Reich­bauer and Dunn are Repub­li­cans. Dunn has made it clear for weeks that he’s strong­ly opposed to Ordi­nance 2022–0180. von Reich­bauer has been far less out­spo­ken, but was expect­ed to join Dunn in vot­ing no, and did so when it was his turn to vote.

The final vote to send the pro­posed change to vot­ers in a cou­ple of weeks is like­ly to be exact­ly the same. Once the Coun­cil com­pletes its work, the fate of the amend­ment will be in vot­ers’ hands. NPI and the Coali­tion For Even-Year Elec­tions are pre­pared to work to secure the amend­men­t’s pas­sage this autumn.

Many orga­ni­za­tions joined NPI in urg­ing the Coun­cil to give Ordi­nance 2022–0180 a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion, includ­ing the League of Women Vot­ers of Seat­tle-King Coun­ty, the Sight­line Insti­tute, Somos Mujeres Lati­nas, the Urban League of Met­ro­pol­i­tan Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Alliance, More Equi­table Democ­ra­cy, and Share the Cities. King Coun­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic Chair Shasti Con­rad and respect­ed elec­tion tim­ing expert Zoltan Haj­nal of UC San Diego also spoke in favor.

Coun­cilmem­ber Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci, the amend­men­t’s prime spon­sor, deliv­ered an excel­lent clos­ing speech for vot­ing yea dur­ing the debate over whether to advance it out of com­mit­tee, rebut­ting some of the bad argu­ments in oppo­si­tion offered by Coun­cilmem­ber Rea­gan Dunn. Dunn argued that the Coun­cil should reject the amend­ment because it could increase can­di­dates’ tele­vi­sion and radio adver­tis­ing costs and bury impor­tant local issues. Absurd­ly, Dunn also sug­gest­ed that hav­ing more peo­ple involved in elect­ing the coun­ty’s lead­ers would be a bad thing because those even year vot­ers might not be cast­ing informed votes!

Here’s what Bal­duc­ci said in response (tran­script edit­ed light­ly for clarity):

I will say that since since sur­fac­ing this pro­pos­al, the case for doing it has been extra­or­di­nar­i­ly compelling.

It’s based on data.

It’s based on research.

It’s based on what we know about what works to get more vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in select­ing their elect­ed representatives.

The oppos­ing argu­ments have been almost entire­ly based on par­ti­san­ship… based on the idea that one side or the oth­er would be dis­ad­van­taged by more peo­ple voting.

And I have to say: if more peo­ple vot­ing is bad for your can­di­da­cy, then, you know, the vot­ers should have a say!

The vot­ers should get to pick who they want to rep­re­sent them.

And sup­pres­sion is nev­er the right approach to win­ning an election.

The oth­er group of oppo­si­tion argu­ments have come from cam­paign insid­ers… peo­ple who are con­cerned about what does this mean for me run­ning a cam­paign or peo­ple who, in oth­er ways, make their mon­ey or get their offices out of run­ning campaigns.

Cam­paigns will adjust.

We will fig­ure it out.

We will fig­ure out how to get our mes­sage out to voters.

I sit here as some­body who was elect­ed, hav­ing been out­spent, when you count inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures and direct can­di­date fund­ing, by almost three-to-one.

And I was able to win because I did what cam­paigns do: I adjust­ed. I cam­paigned, as will oth­ers, with a lot of shoe leather. With a lot of vol­un­teers. With phone call­ing. With the old-fash­ioned methods.

And: We still were able, with the mon­ey that we raised, to do a fair amount of [paid] media.

I am not con­cerned that cam­paigns will not get their mes­sages out.

And I’ll say what I said before: I think that we over­es­ti­mate what most vot­ers do in odd-num­bered years in order to learn about the issues. I think peo­ple read their news­pa­pers, look at their vot­ers’ guides. They might col­lect some of those mail­ers that pile up on the kitchen table. And when the time comes, they pull out what­ev­er their favorite infor­ma­tion sources are.

And they look at the bal­lot — and they ask friends and family.

And they fill in the lit­tle bub­bles, as you said, and they do it based on the infor­ma­tion that is avail­able to them from their pre­ferred sources of infor­ma­tion. And peo­ple will still do that in even-num­bered years.

I don’t think you will see a tremen­dous drop-off in the lev­el of edu­ca­tion or knowl­edge of the vot­ers from odd years to even years.

So I haven’t heard any com­pelling argu­ments not to do this. I don’t know why we did­n’t do it before. And I just want to end by say­ing we are by far not going to be like on the cut­ting edge as coun­ties go. Most coun­ties in Wash­ing­ton State elect their coun­ty coun­cil mem­bers, exec­u­tives, and oth­er coun­ty offices in even years.

Pierce Coun­ty does it to the south, and they’re just fine.

And we’re just fine. And so I real­ly encour­age us to move this for­ward to the Coun­cil, and then at Coun­cil, to move it for­ward to the vot­ers to make up their minds. Thank you, colleagues.

We are thrilled to have the sup­port of a super­ma­jor­i­ty of the Coun­cil for this pro­posed change to King Coun­ty’s sys­tem of elections.

We already elect our Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney and Supe­ri­or Court judges in even years, and we can see that those con­tests are draw­ing far more vot­ers than the odd year elec­tions we have been hold­ing for Exec­u­tive, Asses­sor, Elec­tions Direc­tor, and Coun­ty Coun­cil. Align­ing all our elec­tions in midterm and pres­i­den­tial cycles will strength­en our democ­ra­cy and deep­en the rela­tion­ship between the peo­ple of King Coun­ty and their gov­ern­ment. It’s actu­al­ly the norm in Wash­ing­ton State for coun­ty offices to be cho­sen in even-num­bered years — thir­ty-six out of thir­ty-nine coun­ties already do it. It’s time King Coun­ty joined them.

Two years ago, when the Coun­cil major­i­ty sub­mit­ted a pack­age of sev­en char­ter changes to vot­ers, all of them were adopt­ed by vot­ers, despite some Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion. That expe­ri­ence showed that King Coun­ty vot­ers are keen­ly inter­est­ed in ideas to make their coun­ty gov­ern­ment func­tion more effec­tive­ly. This autumn, they’re slat­ed to get anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to make a change for the better.