Nice work, District 3 voters. As of Tuesday night, the district representing Capitol Hill, the Central District, First Hill, and more of Central Seattle had the highest percentage of ballots returned with a relatively robust 12.6% mark.
You can track the totals with King County Elections here and find out more about how to return your ballot here. Ballots must be postmarked or dropped in an official county drop-box by 8 PM Capitol Hill Daylight Time on Tuesday, August 4th.
Meanwhile, South Seattle’s District 2 has seen the lowest return percentage at 8.9%.
Across all active and registered voters in Seattle, 10.2% of ballots have been returned.
Great information but a subpar chart: how about having the Y-axis start at 0?
Sure thing — not sure why Google Docs would default to that range. But… fixed. The change will update in the post soon.
Pretty dismal participation levels overall. Interesting how these numbers might compare to previous council elections at a similar point in time. Still, only ten percent or so thus far surprises me.
I’m not that surprised. Most people don’t care about local elections even though the results have a huge impact on our daily lives. Also, having an election in the summer is ridiculous. So many people are out of town and it doesn’t make sense to hold an election at a time other than the fall, which is when people expect elections. A friend of mine is on vacation and won’t be back until after the election. Another friend of mine just barely missed the election registration window. On top of all of this, I can’t find where I put my stamps and there are hardly any ballot drop box locations on the hill or in the CD (someone please correct me if I’m wrong–I haven’t seen any.) Want more people to vote? Eliminate the need to put a stamp on ballots and hold elections in November.
If the stamp is the major issue, I’m going out on a limb and saying you’re not really caring all that much about the election.
And the whole “summer vacation” thing means that yeah, rich people who spend a month on vacation may not get to vote. Sorry. Most of the non-rich people can’t afford to take four weeks straight of vacation.
OMG. Buy a stamp at the grocery store and leave it for your mail person sticking out of your mailbox. Don’t you pay bills, write letters, send thank-you cards?
I don’t have a mailbox that allows for outgoing mail. Trust me, I’ve left mail in there with a sticky on the mailbox and everything. There’s no way to have it “sticking out” because you have to have a key to open it and deposit mail. Anyway, I’m just being lazy and I do plan on voting. However, I stand by my stamp statement. It can be prohibitive for low-income voters. And in response to the other comment about rich people going on vacation for four weeks, you know who else leaves Seattle for four weeks or more during the summer? A vast chunk of our student population. Summer elections don’t make sense.
You have GOT to be kidding. A stamp costs…what?….32 cents…even low income people can afford that, if they care about voting.
Our mail-in ballots arrive several weeks prior to the primary, so even those who take vacations can still vote and mail it in.
I agree, it should be after Labor Day. And while I sorely miss in-person voting, at the very least there should be more drop boxes, so people who don’t want to buy a stamp would have a convenient alternative. One would think that with all the money saved by doing away with polling places, the county could afford to put at least three or four in each district.
C’mon. A stamp as a barrier. Here is a secret I have heard – that the post office will deliver unstamped ballots. Anyone know the facts on this?
Sawant won before with the same voting methodology. So if she loses will some claim that her constituency were disenfranchised?
I agree that the dismal number of returns is unfortunate. I imagine it will go up on the final week.