Once upon a time, Washington cities had the freedom to choose their election timing

One of NPI’s pri­or­i­ties for this leg­isla­tive ses­sion is advanc­ing vot­ing jus­tice and sim­pli­fy­ing our elec­tions sys­tem by allow­ing Wash­ing­ton’s cities and towns to move their elec­tions for may­or, coun­cil, and oth­er leg­isla­tive or exec­u­tive posi­tions to even num­bered years, when vot­er turnout is high­er and more diverse.

Our bill to do this, SB 5723, has­n’t attract­ed much oppo­si­tion — Tim Eyman was the only one to speak against it dur­ing the pub­lic hear­ing — but we know there are a few folks out there who are skep­ti­cal of the mer­its of this idea.

We want to empha­size that what we’re propos­ing is not a new idea. Actu­al­ly, it’s a return to the frame­work that we used in the ini­tial decades after statehood.

It used to be that many cities in Wash­ing­ton had the pow­er to choose when their elec­tions would be held. That’s right: they once had the same free­dom our bill pro­pos­es to give them! We know this because we’ve researched the history.

The statute that gov­erns the tim­ing of munic­i­pal elec­tions is RCW 29A.04.330. It is more than one hun­dred years old — it dates back to 1921!

You can read the orig­i­nal law here. (Thank­ful­ly, the Code Revis­er main­tains copies of our old laws and it is there­fore pos­si­ble to look up the his­to­ry of the law with­out hav­ing to pull out a dusty vol­ume from the law library!)

In the ear­ly decades of the state, local elec­tions were not held in the autumn, they were held in the spring­time and terms began on the first Mon­day in June. This default per­sist­ed through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

Some were held in even years, some were held in odd years.

In 1955, the Leg­is­la­ture amend­ed the law.

As of that point, the law stat­ed explic­it­ly that munic­i­pal elec­tions were to be held on the sec­ond Tues­day in March in even-num­bered years by default but there was a carve-out for “first class” cities that had char­ters pro­vid­ing that reg­u­lar city elec­tions be held on a bien­ni­al basis in odd num­bered years.

Then, in 1963, the Leg­is­la­ture passed a law adopt­ing a new default for everybody.

Munic­i­pal elec­tions moved to autumns of odd num­bered years:

All city, town, and dis­trict elec­tions, except as less­er con­stituen­cies in here­inafter pro­vid­ed, whether gen­er­al or spe­cial, and whether for the elec­tion of munic­i­pal or dis­trict offi­cers or for the sub­mis­sion to the vot­ers of any city, town or dis­trict of any ques­tion for their adop­tion and approval, or rejec­tion, shall be held in Class AA or Class A coun­ties on the Tues­day fol­low­ing the first Mon­day in Novem­ber in the odd-num­bered years …

So the state-lev­el odd year require­ment for cities and towns dates back to 1963.

It went into effect in 1967.

There can’t be many vot­ers who are still alive who vot­ed when munic­i­pal elec­tions were nor­mal­ly held in even years — it tru­ly has been a long time.

This leg­isla­tive ses­sion is the six­ty year anniver­sary of the leg­isla­tive-pre­scribed changeover. What was the ratio­nale? For some, it may have been to spread things out to cre­ate an annu­al cadence. It may also have been to stack the deck to ensure local elec­tions would be decid­ed by an old­er, whiter elec­torate. Sys­tem racism is sad­ly part of Wash­ing­ton’s his­to­ry as well as this coun­try’s history.

The law itself says:

The pur­pose of this sec­tion is to change the time of hold­ing all gen­er­al city, town, and dis­trict elec­tions in Class AA and Class A coun­ties from March of either the even-num­bered or odd-num­bered years, as the case may be, to a com­mon elec­tion date, being the Tues­day fol­low­ing the first Mon­day in Novem­ber of the odd-num­bered years, and fur­ther, to change the time of hold­ing reg­u­lar port dis­trict elec­tions in Class AA and Class A coun­ties and park and recre­ation dis­tricts in Class AA coun­ties from the Tues­day fol­low­ing the first Mon­day in Novem­ber of the even num­bered years to the Tues­day fol­low­ing the first Mon­day in Novem­ber of the odd-num­bered years.

King Coun­ty became a home rule char­ter coun­ty in 1969 and thus its switch to odd year elec­tions came after cities and towns were put into odd years. (The default tim­ing for coun­ties has con­tin­ued to be in even-num­bered years.)

PUDs (pub­lic util­i­ty dis­tricts) have notably always been exclud­ed from the odd year elec­tions require­ment. Con­se­quent­ly, PUD elec­tions have much bet­ter par­tic­i­pa­tion than port elec­tions due to being held in even years.

Even year elec­tions are extreme­ly pop­u­lar with vot­ers and good for democ­ra­cy. It does­n’t make sense that cities and towns are locked into odd-year tim­ing. Coun­ties have the free­dom to switch to even years, as King Coun­ty just vot­ed to do, but cities can­not do this. Our bill will fix that. Let’s get it passed!