Moving King County elections to even years will make county topics more visible to voters

With bal­lots in the 2022 midterms due to be mailed out to vot­ers soon, The Seat­tle Times today pub­lished a new arti­cle look­ing at King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1, a pro­pos­al devel­oped here at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and backed by a broad coali­ton that would move elec­tions for twelve coun­ty posi­tions out of low turnout odd num­bered years to high­er turnout even num­bered years.

Writ­ten by reporter David Gut­man, the arti­cle does an excel­lent job pre­sent­ing our coali­tion’s argu­ments for the amend­ment as well as Repub­li­can Coun­cilmem­ber Rea­gan Dun­n’s argu­ments against it. The first half of the arti­cle even includes a com­pelling com­par­i­son that we’ve been using through­out the cam­paign, which made its debut here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate near­ly a year ago in this post and helped inspire the devel­op­ment of the char­ter amendment:

Over the past 20 years, King Coun­ty vot­er turnout in even years has aver­aged 77%. Vot­er turnout in odd-num­bered years has aver­aged 47%.

To cite a recent exam­ple: King Coun­ty vot­ers changed the coun­ty char­ter (essen­tial­ly the coun­ty con­sti­tu­tion) in 2020, when they approved sev­en char­ter amend­ments relat­ed to the Sheriff’s Office and oth­er issues. That year, of course, also hap­pened to fea­ture elec­tions for pres­i­dent and governor.

With those high-pro­file races act­ing as draws, more than 1.1 mil­lion peo­ple vot­ed for the low-pro­file char­ter amendments.

A year lat­er, in 2021, Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine ran for a fourth term against state Sen. Joe Nguyen.

It was an, at times, testy cam­paign for a pow­er­ful office. But with­out the big nation­al and state-lev­el races to draw in vot­ers, only about 570,000 vot­ers cast bal­lots in the race.

Near­ly twice as many peo­ple vot­ed on the rather dull char­ter amend­ments in an even-num­bered year, as vot­ed for the huge­ly influ­en­tial coun­ty exec­u­tive in an odd-num­bered year.

In addi­tion to help­ful com­par­isons like the one Gut­man use­ful­ly includ­ed in his arti­cle, we have years of returns data from King Coun­ty Elec­tions show­ing that response rates for down­bal­lot items in even num­bered years are con­sis­tent­ly bet­ter than response rates for top of the tick­et items in odd num­bered years.

We also know that even-year elec­torates are more inclusive.

So we can say with con­fi­dence that if were elect­ing our Exec­u­tive, Asses­sor, Elec­tions Direc­tor, and Coun­cilmem­bers in even-num­bered years, the turnout would not only be greater, it would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly more diverse… with more younger vot­ers, vot­ers of col­or, work­ing class vot­ers, and renters turn­ing out.

Yet Repub­li­cans like Rea­gan Dunn still aren’t on board:

Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Rea­gan Dunn, one of the two no votes in July, still thinks it’s a bad idea.

Yes, Dunn con­cedes, more peo­ple will vote for these coun­ty posi­tions if the elec­tions are held in even years. But, he asks, will peo­ple pay atten­tion to the coun­ty races, will the local issues at stake be able to break through the noise of the high­er-pro­file campaigns?

Dunn has not been active­ly cam­paign­ing against Char­ter Amend­ment 1 (as the arti­cle observes, there’s no orga­nized oppo­si­tion), but he has con­tin­ued to argue it should be reject­ed when asked to weigh in by the press. The com­ments pub­lished today are sim­i­lar to those he’s made before:

“The mon­ey that is spent on the gov­er­nor, sen­a­tor, con­gres­sion­al races and pres­i­dent utter­ly drowns out any­thing that could be spent on a local coun­ty race,” Dunn said. “You’re com­plete­ly drown­ing out the local issues like home­less­ness, like crime, like local transportation.”

It could, Dunn argues, work to pro­tect incum­bents, as chal­lengers find it dif­fi­cult to afford high­er adver­tis­ing rates when they’re being crowd­ed out by the high­er pro­file races. At the same time, Dunn, a Repub­li­can who has run for coun­ty, con­gres­sion­al and statewide office, con­cedes that mov­ing coun­ty elec­tions to high­er turnout even-num­bered years would, in gen­er­al, be bad for Republicans.

I made this point last spring, but it bears repeat­ing: The “local issues” Rea­gan Dunn keeps talk­ing about are also state and fed­er­al issues. Home­less­ness, crime, and trans­porta­tion don’t cease to become con­cerns at oth­er lev­els of government.

In the 8th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict race — which he was elim­i­nat­ed from a few weeks ago — both top two can­di­dates are talk­ing about crime and pub­lic safe­ty. Kim Schri­er even has a pub­lic safe­ty themed ad that has a local angle.

Dunn keeps argu­ing that if we move coun­ty elec­tions to even years, “local issues” (what he real­ly means is local per­spec­tives on key issues) will get buried or drowned out. But that is already hap­pen­ing under the cur­rent sys­tem.

We can see it in the turnout data and in the lack of civic engagement.

In Wash­ing­ton State, every reg­is­tered vot­er gets a bal­lot sent to them with three weeks to return it. This is, accord­ing to inde­pen­dent research, the eas­i­est state in the coun­try to vote in along with Ore­gon. Yet, in odd years, most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans sim­ply don’t par­tic­i­pate. The last time a major­i­ty of peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton vot­ed in an odd-year elec­tion was in 2011. Five of the worst all-time gen­er­al elec­tion turnouts in state his­to­ry have been in the past ten years: in 2017, 2015, 2021, 2019, and 2013 (list­ed in this para­graph in the order of low­est turnouts).

Dunn asks rhetor­i­cal­ly if peo­ple will pay atten­tion to coun­ty races if they’re in even years. The answer is yes, they will… because coun­ty gov­er­nance and coun­ty-lev­el top­ics will be part of the mix in years when peo­ple are more attuned to pol­i­tics and when the medi­a’s polit­i­cal cov­er­age is more robust.

In oth­er words, the inverse of Dun­n’s argu­ment is true.

The coat­tails effect in pol­i­tics is a known and pow­er­ful force… a force that can ben­e­fit gov­ern­ment at the coun­ty lev­el and increase its vis­i­bil­i­ty with voters.

The argu­ments I’m mak­ing here might seem para­dox­i­cal to those who are averse to change, or unwill­ing to be guid­ed by data. But life and pol­i­tics are full of para­dox­es. And notice that Rea­gan Dunn isn’t putting any­thing on the table besides unsup­port­ed crit­i­cisms of our pro­pos­al. He admits we have a turnout prob­lem in odd years, but he isn’t offer­ing any ideas to do any­thing about it.

A healthy democ­ra­cy requires par­tic­i­pa­tion and right now, we’re not see­ing the robust par­tic­i­pa­tion we want to see in coun­ty elec­tions held in odd years.

We need to tack­le this prob­lem, not ignore it and allow it to con­tin­ue to fester.

Our team often hears peo­ple who work in pol­i­tics joke that the coun­ty is the invis­i­ble mid­dle lay­er of gov­ern­ment, sand­wiched in between the city lev­el and the state lev­el. And there’s def­i­nite­ly truth to that, espe­cial­ly giv­en King Coun­ty’s size. It is a huge juris­dic­tion in mul­ti­ple respects. For exam­ple, its land­mass is greater than that of Rhode Island or Delaware’s, and its pop­u­la­tion exceeds not only that of states like Wyoming or North Dako­ta, but also New Hamp­shire or Hawai’i, too.

Coun­ties are the basic units of gov­ern­ment below the state lev­el. King Coun­ty elect­ed offi­cials work full time and year round for over 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple, mak­ing cru­cial­ly impor­tant deci­sions about land use, trans­porta­tion, infra­struc­ture, pub­lic safe­ty, and much more. These posi­tions should be on an even year bal­lot along­side state and fed­er­al posi­tions like U.S. House, Gov­er­nor, or President.

Right now, vot­ers who turn out only in even years in King Coun­ty don’t see them. They do see Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney and Supe­ri­or Court judges, but they don’t see Exec­u­tive, Asses­sor, Elec­tions Direc­tor, or Council.

This does­n’t make any sense.

The norm for coun­ty elec­tions in Wash­ing­ton is even years. Thir­ty-six out of thir­ty-nine coun­ties reg­u­lar­ly elect all their coun­ty posi­tions in high­er turnout cycles.

King, What­com, and Sno­homish are the only coun­ties that don’t fol­low this norm.

These coun­ties have char­ters that rely on the think­ing espoused by Rea­gan Dunn… that it’s bet­ter for vot­ers and democ­ra­cy if local posi­tions stand on their own in the in-between years. This idea gained a lot of accep­tance back in the 1970s, the decade after King Coun­ty became a home rule char­ter coun­ty. That was when the bifur­cat­ed sys­tem of elec­tions we have was being established.

We now have over half a cen­tu­ry of expe­ri­ence elect­ing peo­ple this way and we can con­clu­sive­ly say that it’s bad for democ­ra­cy. It is a failed exper­i­ment that we can bring to an end with King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1 this autumn.

Join us in vot­ing yes on KCCA1 by Tues­day, Novem­ber 8th at 8 PM. If you’d like more infor­ma­tion about the case for vot­ing yes, check out our cam­paign web­site.