King County voters approving NPI-organized amendment to shift to even-year elections

A pro­posed change to King Coun­ty’s plan of gov­ern­ment that would shift elec­tions for twelve key coun­ty posi­tions from odd-num­bered to even-years is crush­ing it in ini­tial returns with 69.17%, which sug­gests it will ulti­mate­ly be adopt­ed when the Novem­ber 2022 gen­er­al elec­tion is cer­ti­fied lat­er this month.

King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1 (2022), con­ceived here at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and sup­port­ed by the NPI-orga­nized Coali­tion for Even Year Elec­tions, was sub­mit­ted to vot­ers on a 7–2 vote by the King Coun­ty Coun­cil last sum­mer. Spon­sored by Coun­cil Chair Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci, the mea­sure enjoyed a smooth and dra­ma-free cam­paign that was free of any orga­nized opposition.

No one wrote a voter’s pam­phlet state­ment oppos­ing the amend­ment or engaged in any elec­tion­eer­ing oppos­ing it. Aside from a few media inter­views giv­en by King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Rea­gan Dunn, one of the two nay votes on the Coun­cil, no one tried to make a case against Char­ter Amend­ment 1 to the public.

That’s because, as The Seat­tle Times, The Stranger, and The Urban­ist all rec­og­nized, Char­ter Amend­ment 1 just makes sense.

It aligns all coun­ty elec­tions in years when most vot­ers turn out and when turnout is far more diverse: years like 2020 or 2022, which are known as midterm and pres­i­den­tial years due to fed­er­al offices appear­ing on the ballot.

Elect­ing coun­ty offi­cials in even years is actu­al­ly the norm in Wash­ing­ton State and has been a very long time. Thir­ty-six out of thir­ty-nine coun­ties already do it. But home rule char­ter coun­ties have the free­dom to devi­ate from the norm, and three cur­rent­ly do: King, Sno­homish, and What­com. Thanks to vot­ers’ enthu­si­asm for this char­ter amend­ment, King Coun­ty is now set to aban­don the prac­tice, leav­ing just Sno­homish and What­com with non­stan­dard timing.

The switch will be imple­ment­ed by tem­porar­i­ly chang­ing terms for coun­ty offices to a dura­tion of three years in each. In 2023, King Coun­ty vot­ers will elect an Asses­sor, an Elec­tions Direc­tor, and four Coun­cil posi­tions (in Dis­tricts 2, 4, 6, and 8) to three-year terms. In 2026, those posi­tions will then come up in an even-year cycle. The terms will then revert back to four years. So, the offices that were on the bal­lot in 2015, 2019, and due to be on the bal­lot next year will in the future be con­test­ed in midterm cycles: 2026, 2030, 2034, 2038, and so on.

In 2025, King Coun­ty vot­ers will elect an Exec­u­tive and five Coun­cil posi­tions (in Dis­tricts 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9) to three-year terms. In 2028, those posi­tions will come up in an even-year cycle for the first time and revert back to four year terms. So, the offices that were on the bal­lot in 2017 and 2021 will in the future be con­test­ed in pres­i­den­tial cycles: 2028, 2032, 2036, 2040, and so on.

Turnout in these coun­ty elec­tions could as much as dou­ble by the end of the decade as a result of the switch, all because of adopt­ing even-year timing.

It’s espe­cial­ly excit­ing that King Coun­ty vot­ers will get to elect their Exec­u­tive in pres­i­den­tial years, when turnout is con­sis­tent­ly the high­est it ever gets. This is what Pierce Coun­ty already does and it works well. Elect­ing the King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive at the same time as the Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton State and the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States will mean that peo­ple in King Coun­ty will get to vote for their exec­u­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion at three lev­els in the same cycle.

Our team at NPI is incred­i­bly grate­ful to every­one who made this pos­si­ble, espe­cial­ly our leg­isla­tive cham­pi­ons, Coun­cilmem­bers Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci and Gir­may Zahi­lay. With­out Coun­cil Chair Bal­duc­ci’s lead­er­ship, this char­ter amend­ment could not have hap­pened. Her spon­sor­ship, enthu­si­asm, and thought­ful advo­ca­cy were cru­cial to our suc­cess. And Coun­cilmem­ber Zahi­lay’s ener­gy and elo­quence were also huge for our cam­paign. Coun­cilmem­ber Zahi­lay record­ed our video voter’s pam­phlet state­ment, for instance, and it knocked it out of the ballpark.

A big thanks also to Coun­cilmem­bers Rod Dem­bows­ki, Sarah Per­ry, Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Joe McDer­mott, and Dave Upthe­grove for glad­ly sup­port­ing the amend­ment and ensur­ing vot­ers got a chance to con­sid­er it this year.

Our friends at the Wash­ing­ton Com­mu­ni­ty Alliance helped put the cam­paign com­mit­tee togeth­er and spoke before the Coun­cil in favor of its sub­mis­sion to vot­ers. So did More Equi­table Democ­ra­cy, which gen­er­ous­ly pro­vid­ed fund­ing for the cam­paign. The team at Win/Win were instru­men­tal in ensur­ing our get-out-the-vote mass tex­ting cam­paign was suc­cess­ful plus writ­ing let­ters to the editor.

The Wash­ing­ton Bus, the League of Women Vot­ers of Seat­tle-King Coun­ty, Wash­ing­ton For Equi­table Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and the Urban League of Met­ro­pol­i­tan Seat­tle signed on ear­ly to advo­cate for the amend­ment before the Coun­cil and then helped make the case to vot­ers in the weeks lead­ing up to tonight.

The Urban League’s Jude Ahmed and the Bus’ Jazmine Smith spoke at the cam­paign bal­lot drop week kick­off press con­fer­ence along with New­cas­tle City Coun­cilmem­ber Paul Char­bon­neau, the youngest elect­ed offi­cial in King County.

Alan Durn­ing and the Sight­line Insti­tute brought their con­sid­er­able research exper­tise to the effort and helped us make a good pitch for the measure.

Seat­tle Pride, the Tran­sit Rid­ers Union, OneAm­er­i­ca Votes, and the King Coun­ty Democ­rats endorsed the cam­paign and helped secure sup­port for it, as did Shore­line City Coun­cilmem­ber Chris Roberts, a long­time friend of ours, who has writ­ten here about the need to switch to even-year elections.

Jason Ben­nett and Argo Strate­gies han­dled our trea­sury and com­pli­ance needs with great atten­tion and care. NPI strong­ly rec­om­mends Argo if you need a first-rate trea­sur­er and you’re a run­ning an elec­toral campaign.

DJT Con­sult­ing helped keep our coali­tion orga­nized and mov­ing for­ward as the cam­paign sea­son unfold­ed. They’re real­ly great to work with.

Pro­fes­sor Zoltan Haj­nal of UC San Diego endorsed our pro­pos­al and appeared before the King Coun­ty Coun­cil to make the case for its adoption.

NPI’s own Leg­isla­tive Direc­tor Kathy Saka­hara did a superb job orga­niz­ing tes­ti­mo­ny and con­ven­ing strat­e­gy ses­sions for the amend­ment, then after it qual­i­fied, gra­cious­ly opened up her home for a coali­tion house par­ty to accel­er­ate the cam­paign into the home stretch, which was a delight­ful event.

The whole NPI team is thrilled to have reached this point. We’ve tru­ly changed King Coun­ty elec­tions for the bet­ter. We’re now just a few years away from elect­ing all of our coun­ty posi­tions in years when turnout is high­er and more diverse!