2023 statewide voter turnout could end up as the worst ever in Washington history

Are we about to set yet anoth­er new record for the worst gen­er­al elec­tion vot­er turnout in Wash­ing­ton State his­to­ry? It unfor­tu­nate­ly looks like the answer is like­ly to be yes, based on an analy­sis by our team at NPI of the lat­est bal­lot return sta­tis­tics pub­lished by the Sec­re­tary of State’s office yes­ter­day evening.

With Elec­tion Day hav­ing come and gone, the Sec­re­tary of State’s data shows that 32.62% of bal­lots have been returned as of one day after the elec­tion. That’s not even a third of the elec­torate. And only 24.71% of the bal­lots sent to Wash­ing­ton’s more than 4.8 mil­lion reg­is­tered vot­ers have been counted.

The turnout per­cent­age is going to rise, because more bal­lots returned through the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice are mak­ing their way to coun­ty elec­tions offices across Wash­ing­ton. But there’s a real risk we set a new low record for turnout. Elec­tion Day par­tic­i­pa­tion appears to have been unusu­al­ly low this year.

At this point in 2019, the last com­pa­ra­ble elec­tion four years ago, which had the eighth worst turnout in state his­to­ry, the per­cent­age of returned bal­lots was 40.95%, as you can see from the Sec­re­tary of State’s help­ful com­par­a­tive chart in Pow­er Bi, an inter­ac­tive tool they use for pre­sent­ing bal­lot return statistics:

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.

To get a bet­ter sense of the tra­jec­to­ry we are on and how it com­pares to six years ago, we went into our archives and exam­ined all of our snap­shots of data pub­lished by the Sec­re­tary of State from 2017.

You can see below the turnout per­cent­ages through each day of count­ing in the table below. These are the per­cent­ages of tal­lied — not returned — bal­lots. The esti­mat­ed num­ber of bal­lots remain­ing to be processed is also shown.

We are two days into the 2023 count; here are the num­bers for this year:

On the first day of count­ing in 2017, 22.29% of reg­is­tered vot­ers had had their bal­lots count­ed. This year, only 21.35% had. On the sec­ond day of count­ing in 2017, par­tic­i­pa­tion rose to 25.91%; this year, on the sec­ond day of count­ing, it was 24.71%. An esti­mat­ed 302,626 bal­lots remain to be processed.

If they all were to get count­ed, that would take turnout up to about 30.97%.

That’s not the end of the sto­ry, though.

Remem­ber, the Sec­re­tary of State is report­ing that 32.62% of bal­lots have been returned as of yes­ter­day. Not all returned bal­lots get count­ed because some have issues — like the sig­na­ture does­n’t match. Present­ly, in this elec­tion, there are 13,711 chal­lenged bal­lots. 8,850 have a sig­na­ture mis­match, 4,795 are unsigned, and twen­ty-five have no sig­na­ture on file (which is odd).

30.87% of bal­lots have been accept­ed; while 1.19% have been challenged.

Today and tomor­row, the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice is expect­ed to deliv­er the bulk of the remain­ing bal­lots that were mailed by in-state vot­ers in this elec­tion before the Tues­day dead­line arrived. Then, deliv­er­ies will slow to a trickle.

For turnout to sur­pass 2017, we’d need about 1.79 mil­lion vot­ers to par­tic­i­pate at a min­i­mum. We have 4,830,175 reg­is­tered vot­ers in this elec­tion and 37.11% of that elec­torate would be about 1,792,477. Again, 1,193,489 bal­lots have been count­ed and there are an esti­mat­ed 302,626 bal­lots on hand for processing.

If all are count­ed, we get up to 1,496,115 reg­is­tered vot­ers voting.

Are there anoth­er three hun­dred thou­sand or so bal­lots out there mak­ing their way to coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials that aren’t includ­ed in the return fig­ure yet?

It seems unlikely.

Here are the Day Two esti­mat­ed bal­lots to be processed num­bers for all recent odd-year elec­tions. You can see that in both 2021 and 2019, there were a lot more bal­lots await­ing pro­cess­ing on the sec­ond day than this year.

• 2023 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 302,626
• 2021 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 512,130
• 2019 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 623,814
• 2017 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 258,894
• 2015 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 283,001
• 2013 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 422,157

And here are some recent even years for addi­tion­al comparison:

• 2022 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 745,330
• 2020 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 409,826
• 2018 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 723,438
• 2016 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 791,555
• 2014 Day 2 Esti­mat­ed Bal­lots to Process: 501,376

Bal­lot pro­cess­ing oper­a­tions in sev­er­al major coun­ties were sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt­ed yes­ter­day after an unknown bad actor or actors sent envelopes con­tain­ing bak­ing soda and traces of fen­tanyl to coun­ty elec­tions offices. The sub­se­quent facil­i­ty evac­u­a­tions and law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tions slowed down oper­a­tions in King, Pierce, Spokane, and Skag­it coun­ties. Spokane opt­ed not to run a tabulation.

By the end of tomor­row, we should have much more data to work with that will bet­ter illu­mi­nate our tra­jec­to­ry. We’ll keep a close eye on the turnout data and bring you fur­ther updates and analy­sis through­out the vote count­ing period.

What can be done about this?

At NPI, we’ve been sound­ing the alarm for years about elec­tion fatigue. It is a real and grow­ing prob­lem in Wash­ing­ton and else­where in the Unit­ed States. We’ve done great work here and in Ore­gon to make vot­ing easy, and that work has helped increase turnout in even-num­bered years. But in odd-num­bered years, most vot­ers are not turn­ing out. The trend looks real­ly, real­ly bad.

If we want Wash­ing­ton State’s local offi­cials to be cho­sen by the many rather than a few, then we need to act. Most coun­ties are already hold­ing their reg­u­lar elec­tions in even years, but cities can­not. A state law dat­ing back to the 1960s cur­rent­ly locks all Wash­ing­ton munic­i­pal­i­ties into odd years — they have no choice but to hold their reg­u­lar elec­tions for may­or, city attor­ney, city coun­cil, and oth­er offices in years when the elec­torate is small­er, old­er, rich­er, and whiter.

NPI has devel­oped leg­is­la­tion to allow cities and towns to regain the free­dom to choose their elec­tion tim­ing. Sen­ate Bill 5723, prime spon­sored by our cham­pi­on Sen­a­tor Javier Valdez, is cur­rent­ly parked in Sen­ate Rules. It will be our top pri­or­i­ty for the 2024 leg­isla­tive ses­sion. If you are inter­est­ed in help­ing get it passed, please reach out. You can text us at 425–310-2785.

More back­ground about the bill is avail­able at evenyears.org and our friends at Sight­line have just pub­lished a huge­ly use­ful deep dive that looks at the vot­er turnout penal­ty Wash­ing­ton cities and towns are pay­ing due to being forced to hold their elec­tions in odd-num­bered years. Be sure to check that out here.