Sawant on Election Night
In need of claiming 62% of the vote in remaining ballots, Kshama Sawant’s latest election count comeback took shape Wednesday as King County Elections added 7,000 new ballots to its tally in the District 3 recall election with, yes, just over 62% of the latest votes coming in for the “no” camp.
What comes next will be a nail biter — there are around 1,200 ballots left to process. Challenged ballots will also be an important factor.
UPDATE 12/9/2021 10:45 AM: A recount could also be likely. Unlike some races, local ballot measures like this do not have legal thresholds that require a recount to be performed. “Interestingly enough, there actually aren’t any mandatory recount requirements for local ballot measures (which is what a recall is), just local races,” an elections spokesperson tells CHS. “A recount could be requested, but the requestor does bear the responsibility for the cost.”
Thursday morning, King County Elections confirmed it expects to include 1,200 or so ballots in the afternoon update. “After this it will really be a trickle of cured signature ballots and maybe a handful that arrive by mail with an on-time post mark,” the spokesperson said.
King County Elections says there are 656 challenged ballots that can be resolved — mostly issues of voters who forgot to sign or their signature didn’t match.
As for “uncurable” challenged ballots, they should be considered as in play. Those typically involve situations like someone moving during an election and being issued two ballots. If the voter returns the first ballot, the county will hold onto that vote in case the second ballot also shows up. The other category that will ultimately end up in the uncurable total are ballots that were received too late.
Officials say voters have until December 16th to address issues with their ballots. King County Elections workers are contacting voters with challenged ballots by phone and email but can also check the status of your ballot here.
Original report: Tuesday, CHS reported on the early “commanding” 53%, 2,000-vote lead for the “yes” on recall side on an unusually complete Election Night first count that saw more than 32,000 ballots tallied, leaving only about 9,000 ballots in play.
“In every one of our elections, there has been a dramatic swing after Election Night in our direction,” Sawant said. “Given the unprecedented nature of this undemocratic December election, while we cannot be sure of the final result, if past trends hold, it appears working people may have prevailed in this fight.”
Recall turnout ranges from intense participation in Madison Park area in the high 70s to high 40s/low 50s in the more densely populated cores of Capitol Hill and the Central District. Meanwhile, King County Elections officials report around 550 “curable” challenged ballots could still be counted with issues over missing or non-matching signatures.
Overall turnout will come in just under 53% for a December special election. The 2019 November general election in which Sawant overcame challenger Egan Orion with a late comeback win saw turnout hit 59% in D3. A 59% turnout in the recall election would have added another 4,600 ballots to the pool.
Wednesday, the Kshama Solidarity campaign made a last minute plea for fundraising support from backers. “These ‘challenged’ ballots, which don’t get immediately counted due to errors like forgetting to sign or having a signature that doesn’t clearly match the one on record, usually overwhelmingly come from working people,” it reads. “We need to fight for every last ballot from working people, renters, youth, and people of color to be counted, which means we’ll be reaching out to people with challenged ballots to help “cure” them by making them complete.”
In early voting, the number of “challenged” ballots over issues like signature matches, disproportionately affected younger voters with more than 2% of ballots returned by voters 25-34 facing challenges vs. less than 1% of those from voters 65+. 18 to 24-year-olds, meanwhile, saw around 4.9% of their ballots challenged. Typically, King County says about 1.5% of ballots will be challenged in any election. Voters will have time until certification to verify issues like signature matches but many will not be aware or go through the effort.
Organizers led by neighborhood opponents of the socialist city council member and powered by the financial contributions from a mix of residents and real estate developers outlined multiple acts they say warranted Sawant’s recall including 1) using city resources to promote a Tax Amazon initiative, 2) allowing demonstrators inside City Hall during a protest in June 2020, and 3) marching to Mayor Jenny Durkan’s home address kept secret due to her past role as a federal prosecutor.
Critics say the recall is punishment for the longest serving member of the city council’s record as a champion for tenants rights and her actions protesting Seattle Police during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020. Many also point to the recall as part of what they say is a troubling trend to turn to recalls to target popular progressive, and more left-leaning politicians. Over the summer, California voters rejected an attempted recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom leaving the state to reexamine its recall laws. In Los Angeles, new recall efforts have been launched against County District Attorney George Gascón over his progressive policies. In San Francisco, voters will consider a June recall of Chesa Boudin, the District Attorney many compared to Seattle’s unsuccessful police abolitionist City Attorney candidate Nicole Thomas-Kennedy.
The Sawant recall attempt also follows a failed push to oust Sawant political opponent Mayor Jenny Durkan from office.
Only voters in District 3 — encompassing Capitol Hill, First Hill, the Central District, Montlake, Madison Valley, and Madison Park — participated in the yes/no recall vote. If the “yes” vote prevails, the council will select a temporary replacement until the next general election in the city. The winner in that vote next November would finish Sawant’s current term through the end of 2023.
The process to select an interim to fill the seat is likely to take place in the new year under the new council with returning members and new addition Sara Nelson. Sawant and her campaign criticized her fellow councilmembers on Election Night, saying Lorena González, Teresa Mosqueda, and Tammy Morales had not lifted “a finger to oppose this recall.”
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lolllllllll
Go Kshama! We got this.
That lol is exactly how I felt after the election in November and you said you’d be protesting every day, if I recall (like my use of that word?) correctly.
This comment is illegible but you look bitter about something
CD Born n Raised knows what I’m talking about. and PS – the vote count isn’t done yet. If the recall fails, we all knew it was a longshot. And as for you, talk about ‘illegible’ (incorrect usage of the word, by the way), your comment is nonsensical as it makes no sense.
We’re already almost even? Wow.
The No ballots just need to maintain their current ratio (not even counting the challenged votes).
And that’s not even counting if any ballots are still in the process of being counted.
Still can’t wait to recall every politician I don’t agree with. Seattle politics are about to get really dirty.
Don’t be so melodramatically obtuse. You know there is a process for a recall to be approved by the courts, you know you have to get enough signatures to get it on a ballot, and you know it’s a part of the state constitution.
Like for abortion rights?
This recall wasn’t legitimate, none of those charges were legitimate reasons for a recall, they’re clowning, and the “leading people to Jenny’s house” one was just plain false, I was there, that’s no secret either. This was political, we all know this. You playing dumb because you want the recall to happen is a pointless because we aren’t going to suddenly forget that. To thine own self be true at the very least, and remember this as you watch the Supreme Court.
Whoa there Nellie, ease off the random issue generator. We’re not talking about abortion…unless that’s what you want to call Sawant’s reign of terror over her gutless councilmembers and their hopeless, impotent policies. The only thing you got right is that this recall isn’t really about her misappropriation of funds, or a panty raid at Jenny’s house, or allowing a bunch of malcontents to storm the Capitol building (…oh wait, that’s the other idiot…). It’s about her contemptible contributions to the INEXORABLE DEGRADATION of what used to be a really great place to live. Sawant’s attempts to declaw the police, her support of anarchists seeking to destroy anything and everything that is beautiful in this city, and her crazy Marxist policies that led 3 billion people into stagnation and poverty (that’s the Soviets and Nehru’s India, honey) are MORE than enough to eject this shrill harpy into the refuse bin of history. This isn’t about Democrats and Republicans. This is about reversing the course of this Train of Disaster before we go off a cliff.
Great post. I don’t think many of her followers know the realities of Socialist policies. I doubt any of them have seen how the average soviet lived or even how they live now nor been to East Germany before the reunification. It’s a dire life and not on par with the lifestyle most of them are living already.
It’s about people like you abusing the recall system by completely ignoring the parameters listed on the ballot to remove an elected council member for whatever bat shit crazy opinions you might have. You’re attempted do over election will always be remembered as an embarrassing failure
Gonna have eyes like a hawk watching the city attorney’s office. The second she slips, which won’t be long considering her inexperience, Recalling Ann Davison is on the menu. Sara Nelson too, come to think of it. I’m sure someone who took PPP loans and still laid people off will mess up at some point. Not a matter of if but when. We’ll find something that sticks. Recall fever: catch it!
The thing is, your left-wing BS doesn’t play outside of D3 quite as well as it does here. Even inside D3, you guys had to scratch and claw to make 50%, supporting someone who should have been a slam-dunk in this district, she barely polled 50%. That’s with all your late-breaking get-out-the-vote activities.
Your Revolution, to sum up, barely wins in your own cherry-picked district. You cannot win city-wide, your toxic brand of performance-art BS is an unpopular movie we’ve all seen – because most of us over 40 and remember how terrible real Socialism was back when The Warsaw Pact nations had it. Under no circumstance your Trotsky and Alinsky-fueled minds can imagine would we ever want that system of government here. All your blither blather about “The Ruling Class” is hilariously idiotic and a bright red – you might say red and black – warning flag to a majority of voters throughout Seattle to NEVER ELECT THIS.
So have fun flag waving and window-smashing around D3 imagining you are making a difference anywhere else except for fundraising for The Socialist Alternative.
Which, BTW, endorses recalls.
https://www.socialistalternative.org/socialism-in-the-21st-century/how-could-socialism-work/
“Nationally, regionally and locally – at every level – elected representatives would be accountable and subject to instant recall. Therefore, if the people who had elected them did not like what their representative did, they could make them stand for immediate re-election and, if they wished, replace them with someone else.”
Your own organization says a recall is OK. You guys are such clowns.
Go nuts, dude. There’s a review process for recalls, a fact which you and your fellow zealots seem prone to forget. If it’s legitimate, like the one against Sawant, it’ll pass the review.
Marching to city hall wasn’t seen as a legit reason by all. Some judges shouldn’t be judges. It’s still subjective. You break the law any time you speed your car on the freeway. Not enough reason to take away someone’s job.
So the judges on the WA Supreme Court shouldn’t be judges because they issue a ruling you don’t like? That sounds very Trumpish doesn’t it?
You tried to recall Mayor Durkan. How did that work out for you?
She didn’t run for re-election. So not too bad actually!
Why do they call it undemocratic? It’s allowed by our laws and the citizens of D3 can vote in it.
Maybe she doesn’t like the reasons behind the recall, but there’s nothing undemocratic in this process
Not undemocratic, and in fact the Socialist Alternative website itself advocates for a system of government where every elected official could be subject to “instant recalls” at any point in time, in an effort to ensure accountability.
Because the Recall effort gamed the system in an explicit effort to reduce turnout. They held onto their final petition sheet until they were sure the vote wouldn’t go on the November ballot.
Also the Recall effort has a PAC to allow extra spending by the rich MAGA donors who are behind. the. effort.
It’s legal, but it’s definitely not democratic.
The Recall spent about the same amount as Sawant, including the PAC money, and she didn’t have to pay any legal costs to pursue her court challenge of the recall. The Recall campaign incurred extensive costs to oppose her legal challenges, which were paid by the city.
I supported the Recall financially to the max allowed by law and I supported Bernie Sanders. Life is complicated my friends.
How is King County going to verify residency of homeless voters? How do we know if they actually live on Broadway or in Ballard, Bonney Lake or Brooklyn?
Scared? Ha !
You bet. Scared that our election laws have some major holes. Scared that the real right wing not the imaginary D3 right wing will use this election as an excuse for more voter suppression laws across the country. Scared Seattle will continue to circle the drain. Scared that Seattle’s stupid response to homelessness will continue to attract drug addicts from across the country. Scared that the leftists are mirroring unethical right wing tactics. Scared that the cautionary tale of Seattle dystopia will contribute to massive Democrat losses in congress and another Trump presidency. Scared that 50% of my neighbors want to be represented by a cartoonish Marxist clown.
So, you’re scared about a bunch of untrue things that KOMO & Rantz have told you to be scared about, got it.
No one is moving to the city for support services. All the research shows that’s not happening.
Seattle is not a dystopia. It’s a great city that has some problem like any city does, largely a result of federal policies. We disagree on how to resolve those problems, but that doesn’t mean it’s a “dystopia”.
“Marxist” is a classification of an economic system, not an epithet. Sawant identifies as a Socialist, not a Communist, and as a Trotskyist, not a Marxist.
To mirror right wing tactics: if you don’t like it, leave.
Said very well
You have to be registered to vote (and the deadline for that was well before the election), which presumably involves some sort of proof of address.
Seriously, why did you comment on this just to communicate that you don’t think homeless people should vote? Repulsive human being.
hahaha man, just when you think people can’t demonize homeless folks enough, they go off and imply that homeless folks will be the one’s who won it for Kshama ( with just the right amount of insidiousness woven in to question the legitimacy of the vote since it’s starting to not turn in your favor). lol The ultimate nimby boogeyman has been born!
Folks who are houseless should vote out divisive Sawant! Our lack of affordable housing is due to the lack of effective action from our city council, Sawant included!
Why do you like voter suppression? So now the houseless aren’t voters to you? Damn you would have loved Jim Crow Alabama. You’re very classist.
Sawant and her campaign criticized her fellow councilmembers on Election Night, saying Lorena González, Teresa Mosqueda, and Tammy Morales had not lifted “a finger to oppose this recall.”
Of course they haven’t because the only time she speaks with them is when she is eviscerating them during one of her canned speeches. Remember Mosqueda and Gonzales originally endorsed someone else in 2019 and only spoke up once Amazon threw their weight around. If you ever watch the council meetings there are many times when she proposes something and can’t even get a courtesy second from someone. It’s comical that she expects support from her colleagues when she would readily throw them under the bus if the roles were reversed.
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Survive or not she will never have any kind of support from me.
She has divided us, whether she wanted it or not. Price of progress?
I can’t wait to get away. I wonder why she didn’t bring Socialism to her home city of Mumbai but that’s a different question.
Her having B Sanders and the nation scrutinize our little sub-city election is so wrong. We are a neighborhood not a nation.
I’m looking for some drinking fountains, libraries that are safe, restrooms, playgrounds, parks that are clean, grocery stores whose entrances are not blocked, I’m looking for a livable place —and whatever it takes, I wish that she had put something like the energy she puts into the international Socialism movement into her own local neighborhood. I might’ve supported her.
She never represented me.
The tone of the conservative comments have drastically changed from gloating to bitterly dejected.
They’ve gone from “We have the backing of District 3!” to “I never supported her and she represented me.”
Truly, it must hurt to have the realization that you’re in the minority four elections in a row, including in a highly publicized special election that cost the city taxpayers $300k for the district to come out of the woodworks and tell the conservatives to kindly go fuck themselves.
This has been an extreme waste of money, time, and resources and I hope the recall campaign is ashamed.
Ashamed of what? Pointing out ethics violations that the WA SC ruled serious enough to have a recall go forward? I am impressed that this effort succeeded to extent that it has. Sawant is a senior council member with a long track record and enormous name recognition in Seattle; she has national high-profile endorsements and draws large sums (over$500,000 in this recall) from outside Seattle and as well as volunteers through her affiliation as the only elected member of the SA. And yet…her margin will be some 50 to 100 votes, maybe 200 (she won her last election by 1700 votes).
The Recall campaign stayed on message while the Solidarity campaign resorted to name calling. Sawant could have squashed this Recall early by admitting her mistakes, apologizing, and showing up in her district. I am pleased with this result because many of us are paying closer attention to local issues now, and we have familiarized ourselves with Ms. Sawant and her record rather than reflexively voting for the most leftward-sounding candidate. Next time, she will have to run on her record against others rather than against charges that to many seemed not quite serious enough for a recall. Telling about half of her district to “kindly go fuck themselves” is not a winning strategy for a local representative in the long run.
As for the extreme waste of money…yes, the city has been paying a lot for law suits against her.
50% of the local voters want to remove from her from office 2 years into her term… the same group of voters who voted for Joe Biden probably by 90%.
I expect some kind of shame and reflection from Sewant and her supporters… instead you complain and label 50% of D3 voters as “Conservative”.
Please leave, you never lived here. You resided here. Good luck.
What does this even mean?
I voted no on the recall because I don’t believe in it but I just wanted to say that you should not listen to the trolly bullies in this comment thread implying you don’t deserve to live here and shouldn’t want a representative in city council unless you’re ready to become an active socialist. You do, and most people in the neighborhood that I’ve spoken to feel this way regardless of their politics.
I feel like I have not had a representative for the last 7 or 8 years. Oh well. Let’s go back to non-district representation.
Just FYI half of people voting to remove her from office is not a victory for Sewant.
Usually politicians will feel the shame, breath a sigh of relief and at least try to listen and course correct a bit… So that the voters don’t hate her as much.
I am sure Ms. Sewant will do none of that.
No matter what happens today the liklihood is that she will either win or lose by less than 50 votes. If she pulls 58% of the drop she loses by 54 and if she pulls 62% as she did yesterday she wins by 42. In either scenario those contested ballots become important and I think there will be a lot of chasing after them so this won’t really be decided until Dec 16th. Regardless of the outcome both sides should realize it was razor thin and neither has a reason to either gloat or feel despondent. The takeaway here is that a highly divisive politician is extremely polarizing, nothing more.
Of course if Leschi gets moved to District 2 as part of the redistricting process currently underway, which is highly probable, we may have yet more to discuss.
Look at this way then: if the recall wins, it’s by a similarly tiny margin. Is that a resounding victory justifying this recall and division you all have put us through? (Not to mention the 2022 election we’ll all have to endure, should the recall pass so weakly.) Or that the much smaller Dec. 2021 electorate overturned the Nov. 2019 electorate that elected Sawant to a third term by almost 2000 votes?
WHO is “you all” that put us through “this recall and division”??? You speak as it were someone else than Sawant- SHE put us through this recall and division! If she hadn’t done the erroneous things she did as a city council member, there would be no recall. Are you really trying so hard to excuse her bad behavior as to put it at the fault of the citizens in her district for holding her accountable for her questionable actions? And are you actually complaining about having to “endure” your PRIVILAGE in 2022 to vote?!? Well if the extremist right wing has its way, you wont ever have to “endure” voting again…
If we are going to recall every politician for minor ethics violations, then there will be nonstop recall elections. As I understand it, Greg Nickels, Richard McIver, Heidi Wills (to name a few) were found guilty of ethics violations, but not subjected to recall. The other two charges could be argued as First Amendment stances. Were they technical violations? Probably. But they must be viewed in the context of an historic time (BLM) and folks were wanting to express their outrage and support for the movement. Sitting at segregated counters in the 1960s South was also a violation of the law, so the law isn’t always just. No property damage was done to City Hall, as I understand it. (I wasn’t there.) It was not a violent disruption of the counting of the electoral votes.
Remember when Sawant had a toady hijack the Pulse Memorial- the one honoring the 49 LGBTQIA people killed in Orlando- to blather on about the homeless? I do. She’s classy.
She was right to discuss homeless LGBTQIA at an event like that. You’re weird for gatekeeping it.
Can’t wait to vote Sawant for mayor :)
too bad Little Saigon (Sawant’s district) is going to lose a chunk of businesses elsewhere. the city is acting too little, too late on that one.