NPI’s research shows most King County voters favor a switch to even-year elections

This morn­ing, the King Coun­ty Coun­cil is accept­ing pub­lic com­ment on Ordi­nance 2022–0180, which, if approved, would give vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State’s largest coun­ty the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote on a char­ter amend­ment this autumn that would move elec­tions for the offices of Exec­u­tive, Asses­sor, Elec­tions Direc­tor, and Coun­ty Coun­cil to even-num­bered years, when vot­ers already elect the Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney and decide con­test­ed races for Supe­ri­or Court judgeships.

Con­ceived by NPI and intro­duced by Coun­cil Chair Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci, the amend­ment would result in all coun­ty posi­tions being elect­ed in midterm or pres­i­den­tial cycles by 2028, when turnout is usu­al­ly the high­est and most diverse.

Elec­tions for posi­tions nor­mal­ly con­test­ed the year after a midterm cycle would move to midterm cycles, while posi­tions con­test­ed the year after a pres­i­den­tial cycle would move to pres­i­den­tial cycles. The realign­ment would be accom­plished by elect­ing all of the posi­tions now con­test­ed in odd-num­bered years to three year terms once, and there­after to four-year terms again.

Here’s a list of the twelve posi­tions that would be affect­ed, grouped by cycle:

• 2023 > 2026 (instead of 2027)
  • King Coun­ty Elec­tions Director
  • King Coun­ty Assessor
  • King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Dis­trict #2
  • King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Dis­trict #4
  • King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Dis­trict #6
  • King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Dis­trict #8
• 2025 > 2028 (instead of 2029)
  • King Coun­ty Executive
  • King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Dis­trict #1
  • King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Dis­trict #3
  • King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Dis­trict #5
  • King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Dis­trict #7
  • King Coun­ty Coun­cil, Dis­trict #9

The metic­u­lous­ly pre­pared staff report for Ordi­nance notes:

If past trends hold, mov­ing these coun­ty offi­cer elec­tions from odd-num­bered to even-num­bered years would like­ly result in high­er vot­er turnout for these coun­ty offi­cer elec­tions. Whether Coun­cil wants to increase vot­er turnout for the elec­tion of these coun­ty offices is a pol­i­cy deci­sion for the Coun­cil to make. 

Empha­sis is mine.

That, in a nut­shell, is what this amend­ment is all about: ensur­ing that the peo­ple who are elect­ed to gov­ern Wash­ing­ton State’s largest polit­i­cal sub­di­vi­sion are cho­sen by the largest, broad­est, and most diverse elec­torate possible.

Decades of vot­er turnout show that par­tic­i­pa­tion is con­sis­tent­ly high in even-num­bered years, while in odd years, it’s typ­i­cal­ly well under fifty percent.

The gap between even and odd years has mor­phed into a chasm in recent years, with even years draw­ing as many as twice as many vot­ers as odd years.

In a post here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate last Novem­ber, I explained the dif­fer­ence that a mere twelve months makes, com­par­ing the 2020 and 2021 elec­tions:

If King Coun­ty had vot­ed on its next Exec­u­tive last year instead of this year, hun­dreds of thou­sands more vot­ers would have weighed in. For com­par­i­son, King Coun­ty turnout was 85.35% in 2020, and over 1.1 mil­lion votes were cast on each of a set of sev­en char­ter amend­ments sub­mit­ted by the coun­ty to voters.

That’s approx­i­mate­ly dou­ble the num­ber of vot­ers [572,911, to be exact] who chose between Dow Con­stan­tine and Joe Nguyen to be the next coun­ty exec­u­tive this month.

It’s actu­al­ly the norm in Wash­ing­ton State for coun­ty offices to be elect­ed in even-num­bered years along­side state and fed­er­al posi­tions. Thir­ty-six out of thir­ty-nine coun­ties fol­low this long-estab­lished prac­tice and enjoy more robust par­tic­i­pa­tion as a result. For exam­ple, King Coun­ty’s south­ern neigh­bor Pierce Coun­ty, the sec­ond largest coun­ty in the state) held its most recent elec­tion for Exec­u­tive in 2020 rather than in 2021, when turnout was more than eighty percent.

The last con­test­ed King Coun­ty Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney drew hun­dreds of thou­sands more vot­ers than the last con­test­ed elec­tion for Exec­u­tive, the coun­ty’s high­est pro­file and most impor­tant office, sim­ply because it was in an even year.

Here’s a comparison:

216,302 more votes were cast for Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney in 2018 than for Exec­u­tive three years lat­er. (And that was despite an increase in the num­ber of reg­is­tered vot­ers over the course of three years.) To put that in per­spec­tive, that’s a dif­fer­ence of more than two Belle­vue-sized elec­torates. More than two!

We don’t know yet what turnout will be like this year. But if it’s any­thing close to what it was in 2018, then this year’s race for Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney will again draw more votes than last year’s race for Exec­u­tive. All thanks to timing.

It has been more than a decade since a major­i­ty of vot­ers turned out to vote in an odd-num­bered year, both in King Coun­ty and Wash­ing­ton State as a whole. Although Wash­ing­to­ni­ans enjoy the right to vote at home, with a win­dow of about three weeks to fill out and return a pack­et to their coun­ty elec­tions office, most vot­ers are choos­ing to cast bal­lots only in even-num­bered years.

They’re send­ing a mes­sage: few­er elec­tions, please.

We need to listen.

Ear­li­er this year, we unveiled research show­ing that a major­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers favor phas­ing out odd year elec­tions entire­ly. Our find­ing, released at a pub­lic hear­ing of the House State Gov­ern­ment & Trib­al Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, demon­strat­ed vot­er inter­est and sup­port for State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mia Gregerson­’s leg­is­la­tion to phase out many odd year elec­tions. The com­mit­tee respond­ed by giv­ing the leg­is­la­tion a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion for the first time. Not long after, the House Rules Com­mit­tee sent it to the floor, which was also a first.

While the bill did not get a floor vote, its place­ment on the floor was a sig­nif­i­cant and encour­ag­ing mile­stone. Next year’s ver­sion of the bill will hope­ful­ly be even bet­ter and advance the effort to sim­pli­fy and strength­en our elec­tions at the state lev­el. In the mean­time, the King Coun­ty Coun­cil has an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to allow vot­ers to decide if they’d like to align all coun­ty elec­tions in even-num­bered years. Our research indi­cates that vot­ers in King Coun­ty are even more enthu­si­as­tic about even year elec­tions than vot­ers in the state as a whole.

Here’s the ques­tion we asked last Novem­ber and the respons­es we received from the statewide sam­ple of nine hun­dred like­ly 2022 vot­ers:

QUESTION: Do you strong­ly agree, some­what agree, some­what dis­agree, or strong­ly dis­agree with the fol­low­ing state­ment: Wash­ing­ton State should dis­con­tin­ue hold­ing elec­tions in odd-num­bered years and instead require cities, coun­ties, ports, school dis­tricts, and oth­er local gov­ern­ments to hold their elec­tions in even num­bered years, when state and fed­er­al offices are on the ballot?

ANSWERS:

• Agree: 52%
  • Strong­ly agree: 31%
  • Some­what agree: 21%
• Dis­agree: 24% 
  • Some­what dis­agree: 13%
  • Strong­ly dis­agree: 11%
• Not sure: 24%

And here are the respons­es from our King Coun­ty subsample:

QUESTION: Do you strong­ly agree, some­what agree, some­what dis­agree, or strong­ly dis­agree with the fol­low­ing state­ment: Wash­ing­ton State should dis­con­tin­ue hold­ing elec­tions in odd-num­bered years and instead require cities, coun­ties, ports, school dis­tricts, and oth­er local gov­ern­ments to hold their elec­tions in even num­bered years, when state and fed­er­al offices are on the ballot?

ANSWERS [KING COUNTY SUBSAMPLE]:

• Agree: 54%
  • Strong­ly agree: 36%
  • Some­what agree: 18%
• Dis­agree: 18% 
  • Some­what dis­agree: 8%
  • Strong­ly dis­agree: 10%
• Not sure: 28%