It’s Top Two Election Day in Washington State – don’t forget to vote!

Read­ers, a reminder that today is the last day of the August 2022 Top Two Elec­tion, the elim­i­na­tion round of our two-part gen­er­al elec­tion system.

Bal­lots must be post­marked or returned by a drop box by 8 PM tonight, or they won’t count. Be sure yours is in, and then remind friends and fam­i­ly to vote, too. Chances are, many of them haven’t. Don’t assume – ask!

Par­tic­i­pa­tion so far in this elec­tion is mir­ror­ing the tra­jec­to­ry that we saw in 2018, at least so far. As of yes­ter­day after­noon, statewide turnout stood at 22.6%; at this same junc­ture in 2018, it was 22.1%.

Lin­coln, Colum­bia, Wahki­akum, Jef­fer­son, and Garfield are the cur­rent turnout lead­ers. Each of those coun­ties is above 35% in returned ballots.

The big­ger coun­ties are lag­ging behind.

Yaki­ma Coun­ty has the worst turnout, with only 17.6% in. Franklin is sec­ond-worst, at 18.7%. Pierce Coun­ty, the state’s sec­ond largest coun­ty, has the third worst turnout, at 19.1%. Sno­homish Coun­ty has the fourth worst turnout, 20.6%, and King Coun­ty has the fifth worst turnout, at 21.2%.

A few medi­um sized swing coun­ties, like What­com and Kit­sap, are in the mid­dle of the pack, with turnout in the high twenties.

Final turnout in the 2018 Top Two elec­tion was 40.79% (it almost dou­bled in the last twen­ty-four hours!), and this year’s Top Two turnout could be that high or high­er if enough Wash­ing­to­ni­ans vote in the final hours.

The team at NPI urges you to be a vot­er and get your bal­lot in.

If you would like to use a drop box to return your bal­lot, here is a list of loca­tions for major counties:

• King Coun­ty
• Sno­homish County
• Pierce Coun­ty
• What­com County
• Skag­it County
• Thurston Coun­ty
• Spokane Coun­ty
• Clark Coun­ty

Need help vot­ing? NPI doesn’t endorse or rate can­di­dates for office, but the Pro­gres­sive Voter’s Guide is avail­able if you want to learn more about who’s on your bal­lot. You can also use the offi­cial voter’s pam­phlet pub­lished by your coun­ty. And for judi­cial races, there’s VotingForJudges.org.

Start­ing tonight, after 8 PM, we will be offer­ing live cov­er­age of elec­tion results here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. Most coun­ties will only report one batch of results tonight, and not update again till tomor­row afternoon.

We will be watch­ing a num­ber of races close­ly, espe­cial­ly the spe­cial elec­tion for Sec­re­tary of State, the con­test for Wash­ing­ton’s 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict (where three Repub­li­can can­di­dates are bat­tling for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take on Kim Schri­er), and leg­isla­tive races in dis­tricts like the 46th and 36th, where large fields of can­di­dates are again com­pet­ing for just two spots on the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot, plus bat­tle­ground LDs like the 26th, 10th, 42nd, and 24th.