2023 is the new worst: Washington again sets a record for low turnout in a general election

For the third time in eight years, Wash­ing­ton has sad­ly set a new record for the low­est statewide turnout ever record­ed in a gen­er­al election.

Today was the dead­line for coun­ties to cer­ti­fy their returns in the Novem­ber 2023 gen­er­al elec­tion, and all coun­ties have now sub­mit­ted their final tal­lies up to the Sec­re­tary of State. Statewide turnout will pass into the his­to­ry books at 36.41% for this year. That’s the low­est Wash­ing­ton has seen since record­keep­ing began.

The pre­vi­ous low record was set in 2017, when turnout was 37.10%.

Before that, the record low was 38.45%, set in 2015.

Here are a few more sober­ing data points:

• It has been more than a decade since an odd-year elec­tion had major­i­ty turnout. 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2023 are all among the ten worst gen­er­al elec­tion vot­er turnouts in state history.
• Of the last six odd-year elec­tion cycles, only two had turnout above forty per­cent (2013 and 2019). Four of the six had turnout in the thir­ties, mean­ing few­er than two in five vot­ers returned a ballot.
• Of Wash­ing­ton’s four biggest coun­ties, only Spokane had turnout exceed­ing forty per­cent this year. Pierce, the state’s sec­ond largest coun­ty, came in at just over thir­ty per­cent. King and Sno­homish were in the mid­dle of the pack, with per­cent­ages mir­ror­ing the state’s total.
• No coun­ty did as bad as Yaki­ma, which had turnout of just 25.82%.

Our team at NPI tracks vot­er turnout care­ful­ly and close­ly, and has been sound­ing the alarm about elec­tion fatigue for a long time. Twice this month, our staff has assessed that we might end up exact­ly where we now find ourselves.

On Novem­ber 6th, sum­ma­riz­ing the avail­able bal­lot return sta­tis­tics, I wrote:

If there isn’t strong Elec­tion Day par­tic­i­pa­tion from Wash­ing­ton vot­ers, we could end up giv­ing 2017 a run for its mon­ey and set­ting a new record for the worst-ever gen­er­al elec­tion turnout in state his­to­ry. That would be very sad.

On Novem­ber 9th, with sev­er­al bal­lot tal­lies com­plet­ed, I wrote:

We’re way, way behind 2019, so there’s no doubt this turnout will be one of the worst in state his­to­ry. 2023 will eas­i­ly rank above 2019 and 2013 on the worst turnouts of all time list, and prob­a­bly 2021 too. Can it also sur­pass 2015, which had the sec­ond worst turnout, and 2017, which had the worst ever?

Sad­ly, we believe it can.

After Elec­tion Day, staff with Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs’ office fig­ured turnout would land some­where between 36% — 39%. The final per­cent­age is with­in that range, but it’s not high enough to sur­pass 2017’s low mark.

And so here we are, with 2023 turnout the new worst in Wash­ing­ton history.

Turnout by county

This year, Colum­bia Coun­ty had the high­est turnout and Yaki­ma Coun­ty had the worst. Colum­bia was one of just two coun­ties that had major­i­ty turnout — the oth­er was What­com, which had an elec­tion for Exec­u­tive. In Yaki­ma Coun­ty, bare­ly more than a quar­ter of vot­ers returned ballots.

New table of worst voter turnouts in Washington history

Below is the new list of the worst gen­er­al elec­tion vot­er turnouts in Wash­ing­ton State his­to­ry, with 2023 tak­ing its place at the top. 2017 is now sec­ond worst, 2015 third worst, and 2021 fourth worst.

And a chart

Here’s a chrono­log­i­cal visu­al­iza­tion of the data above.

Odd-year turnout is trending down, but it’s looked decent or really strong in recent even-numbered years

There was a peri­od when vot­er turnout in Wash­ing­ton was declin­ing across all types of elec­tions, includ­ing those held in even years, but recent even year turnout has been good. 2018 saw almost record high turnout for a midterm cycle, 2020 saw almost record high turnout for a pres­i­den­tial cycle, and 2022 was sol­id, see­ing turnout near both the aver­age and the mean for a midterm cycle.

Mean­while, turnout in odd years just keeps falling.

Why is Washington’s turnout gotten so bad in odd years?

The recent decline in odd year turnout has coin­cid­ed with the imple­men­ta­tion of reforms mak­ing it even eas­i­er to vote. Since the end of the 2010s, we have adopt­ed pre­paid postage for bal­lot return envelopes, increased the num­ber of drop box­es, added same-day / in per­son vot­er reg­is­tra­tion, and begun pre­reg­is­tra­tion for youth. Wash­ing­ton, along with Ore­gon, is con­sid­ered to be the eas­i­est state in the coun­try to vote in. Bal­lots come to vot­ers and a three week peri­od is pro­vid­ed to vote. Yet, in odd years, most vot­ers aren’t voting.

Why?

Put sim­ply, our research and oth­er data sug­gests that peo­ple sim­ply don’t want to vote up to four times a year every sin­gle year. They’re fatigued. Wash­ing­to­ni­ans want a break from elec­toral pol­i­tics in between even year elections.

Peo­ple have also been led to believe that elec­tions held in odd year elec­tions just don’t mat­ter. For exam­ple, many in the media con­tin­u­al­ly refer to years like 2023 as “off” years, a term that implies noth­ing impor­tant is on the bal­lot, when that is absolute­ly not true. On Elec­tion Night, we even heard a reporter work­ing for a nation­al tele­vi­sion net­work call 2023 an “off-off year”. We nev­er use that phrase here at NPI except to crit­i­cize it, but we hear it all the time.

Even if a coor­di­nat­ed effort is made to scrap the use of prob­lem­at­ic terms like “off year”, and even if sig­nif­i­cant resources are invest­ed in vot­er out­reach and edu­ca­tion, it is unlike­ly that odd year turnout will ever be com­pa­ra­ble to even year turnout. In more than a half cen­tu­ry, odd year vot­er turnout has only exceed­ed six­ty per­cent once, and that was in 1991, when there was some­thing real­ly big on the bal­lot: a statewide ini­tia­tive con­cern­ing repro­duc­tive rights.

What voters want

Wash­ing­ton vot­ers favor con­sol­i­dat­ing and sim­pli­fy­ing our sys­tem of elec­tions. They would rather vote on local posi­tions, espe­cial­ly at the munic­i­pal lev­el, at the same time they vote on state and fed­er­al ones.

We know because we’ve asked repeat­ed­ly in our polling. We have found sup­port for even-year elec­tions statewide, in King Coun­ty, and in Sno­homish County.

At NPI, our research informs our advo­ca­cy. We take action in response to what we find. That’s why, in King Coun­ty last year, we worked with Coun­cilmem­bers Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci and Gir­may Zahi­lay to give vot­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to move elec­tions for twelve King Coun­ty posi­tions from odd years to even years.

Over 69% of vot­ers said yes to our char­ter amend­ment. There were a dozen mea­sures like it on bal­lots in places across the coun­try. All of them passed.

King Coun­ty vot­ers in their own words

“I don’t want to get bal­lots every sin­gle year. I vote every time and it takes effort for me to research the can­di­dates. I would like to do this every 2 years.” – Like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty voter

“I think it makes sense to have local elec­tions where more peo­ple turn out. I think the con­cerns about local elec­tions being over­shad­owed by the fed­er­al elec­tion is some­what valid but I think most peo­ple will under­stand the impor­tance of local elec­tions and are aware of the issues fac­ing their com­mu­ni­ties, even if the main top­ic of dis­cus­sion is fed­er­al elec­tions. Also, I think hav­ing fed­er­al and local elec­tions at the some time allows for new peo­ple and ideas to be imple­ment­ed at the same time.” – Like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty voter

“More vot­ers weigh­ing in and reduce like­li­ness of low­er vot­er turnout to impact vot­ing results (good can­di­dates being over­looked or oth­er rule changes pass­ing with unin­formed vot­ers). I gen­er­al­ly think vot­ers take more time and ener­gy to vote dur­ing even years. I dis­agree big­ger issues or elec­tions over­shad­ow small­er issues and elec­tions dur­ing even years.” – Like­ly 2022 King Coun­ty voter

The quotes above are from vot­ers inter­viewed as part of NPI’s July 2022 sur­vey of like­ly Novem­ber 2022 gen­er­al elec­tion vot­ers, con­duct­ed for NPI by Change Research. These vot­ers were asked why they planned to vote yes on King Coun­ty Char­ter Amend­ment 1.

This year, we worked with Sen­a­tor Javier Valdez to intro­duce leg­is­la­tion giv­ing cities and towns the free­dom to move their elec­tions to even-num­bered years. Cur­rent state law locks our munic­i­pal­i­ties into low-turnout odd years, when data com­piled by our friends at Sight­line shows they incur a giant turnout penal­ty.

Our bill, SB 5723, remains parked in the Sen­ate Rules Com­mit­tee, and we are urg­ing the Sen­ate to resume con­sid­er­a­tion of it begin­ning in January.

There is no ques­tion that vot­ers love the idea of even year elec­tions for munic­i­pal­i­ties, both here and else­where. It is huge­ly popular.

Yet some offi­cials, like Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs, are not sup­port­ive. They wor­ry about longer bal­lots in even years and staffing issues.

We believe those are solv­able prob­lems. Our bill is lim­it­ed to a sin­gle lev­el of gov­ern­ment and does­n’t require a city or town to do make any change. For those  that do, the bal­lot would not sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase in length, because no vot­er lives in more than one city or town and most munic­i­pal­i­ties stag­ger terms.

None of the objec­tions that have been raised to mov­ing juris­dic­tions to even years are con­vinc­ing to any of the groups of vot­ers we’ve sur­veyed here in Wash­ing­ton. In fact, after hear­ing both of the argu­ments for and against, sup­port for even-year elec­tions goes up. Vot­ers love the idea of a sim­pler elec­tions sys­tem, with local posi­tions con­test­ed at times when turnout is much high­er and more diverse. It is by far the best solu­tion avail­able to address elec­tion fatigue.

Defend­ers of the sta­tus quo in Wash­ing­ton have yet to offer any ideas for mean­ing­ful­ly address­ing elec­tion fatigue and rais­ing turnout. Since they don’t seem to have any, we urge them to recon­sid­er their oppo­si­tion to our legislation.

Our door is open: we’re hap­py to meet with any­one who wants to become bet­ter acquaint­ed with the data and learn more about the ben­e­fits of even-year elec­tions. The data shows that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans want to see their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives fig­ure out how to get to “yes” on this, rather than say­ing “no.”