With her victory in the November General Election, we’re now getting a look at how Joy Hollingsworth is preparing to take her seat on the Seattle City Council in January with a schedule of community meetings in coming weeks.
We’re also getting a look at what her final margin of victory will be as the District 3 counts have slowed to a trickle.
And, the story of a pile of ballots that was found hidden in plain sight on Capitol Hill.
- Margin of victory: First, let’s talk margin. As of Tuesday’s count — a week since Election Night — Hollingsworth stands at 53% of the vote. In the end, challenger Alex Hudson will finish just over 6 points behind after closing Election Night’s 17-point gap on her strength with later voters.
- Turnout: District 3 is zeroing in on turnout around 46%, well below 2019’s 58% in the district. D3’s mark ranks it third in the city with fewer than 1,000 votes likely left to be counted. South Seattle’s District 2 is bringing up the rear at just over 40% turnout. Overall, the city’s 45.5% turnout level is a sign of low interest and low voter enthusiasm.
The culprit spotted on 15th Ave (Image: Google Maps)
- Ballots found in Capitol Hill mailbox: Dozens of voters who dropped their ballots on Capitol Hill were nearly left out of the count. The Seattle Times reports that 85 ballots were found undelivered to King County Elections inside a mailbox at 15th and John:
Voters who dropped off ballots at a mailbox on 15th Avenue East and East John Street became concerned when their ballots were not counted when they checked the King County Elections ballot tracker. After voters raised the issue with the county, they were told that an outbound mailbox had not been cleared since mid-October.
“While the ballots missed getting postmarked by Election Day, state law allows the elections office to check bar codes and signature dates to determine whether votes were cast in time,” the Times reports. In the D3 race, the missing votes won’t be enough to make an impact but the situation has candidates involved in close races elsewhere in the city concerned there might be more ballots sitting uncollected. To make sure your ballot has been counted, check out the King County Elections Ballot Tracker here. UPDATE: The USPS tells KIRO its mailbox was marked with “out of service” signs “multiple times” but the signage was “removed.” The box has been taken out of service and will be replaced, according to USPS. - The candidate prepares: Hollingsworth tells CHS she is mainly playing it cool until the election results are certified later this month but the incoming councilmember is filling her calendar with community meetings as she prepares for her new job representing District 3. Tuesday, November 14th, Hollingsworth says she will attend a 23rd & Jackson Safety Meeting at Black Coffee NW and Thursday, November 16th will bring her attendance at the African American Advisory Council Meeting at the Garfield Community Center. The Capitol Hill Business Alliance says it will feature a meeting with Hollingsworth on its community schedule in early December. Kshama Sawant, meanwhile, is finalizing her last weeks on the council after a decade serving the city with one final budget battle. Hollingsworth will be sworn-in with the rest of the council in January.
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I’m not surprised that mailbox wasn’t cleared. I saw a postal worker wrestling with trying to open it last month when I stopped to drop off mail. The key wasn’t working, and she never got it open. Luckily, I put my mail in her bin.
I voted for Alex Hudson, but her campaign sucked. She struggled to articulate how she was different than Joy Hollingsworth even though they had some fundamental differences between their two approaches. She had pie in the sky ideas but failed to articulate how to find them, she frequently came off as just as pro-cop as Joy, and, to top it off, she came off as weak-willed compared to Joy.
Joy’s a cop-loving con artist, pretending to be a “progressive” while endorsing many Republican ideals. But, Alex was practically a non entity in her own campaign which doesn’t muster much GOTV.
This is the worst selection I’ve ever voted for in the District 3 elections, and I look forward to trying to oust Joy as soon as she fucks up, just like the conservatives tried to oust Sawant.
The tribalism in local politics is just strange. let’s hope she’s successful so our city can be better off.
You should be trying to hold your current council member accountable. Sawant still hasn’t answered your email from 2022
“…cop loving con artist..” Good god, give it a break with the Marxist histrionics. She’s a homegrown, black, queer, cannabis grower who also happens to be pragmatic about the state the city is in. Anything but conservative, but also not in love with a megaphone and only wanting to deal with global issues vs her own neighborhood. You sure swallowed the ‘con’ that was Sawant (and I voted for her first time around) hook, line, and sinker.
There are few if any actual conservatives in this city… only people who are less left than Sawant – which really isn’t hard, because Marxism is as far left as it is possible to get on the political scale, unless one counts anarchy, which I don’t as it’s the absence of organization.. If you want to experience actual conservatives, I’d suggest trying perhaps Mississippi or Wyoming.
It has always been my experience that extremes of any sort, whether they be on the left or right, are usually harmful. Happy to see Hollingsworth win this race.
I would say a half hour drive from Seattle would suffice. I got harassed in Preston in 2020 waiting outside a coffee shop because I was wearing a Madrona Elementary BLM shirt. Finally had to tell the maskless guy to ‘f*ck off.” He was aghast (I reminded him he was the one who started harassing me) as he jumped in his dual cab pickup that had been parked straddled across two spots. I would say Joy doesn’t really fit the mold, lol.
I have one of those “Loser 1865 (Confederacy)/Loser 1945 (Nazi)/Loser in 2020 (MAGA) shirts and relish wearing it on my travels to Eastern Washington and more conservative locales like that. I’m not particularly tough-looking, but as a dude well north of 220lbs I find that even self-styled MAGA tough guys won’t pick a fight with me over it (and truth to tell, I’d be up for it if they did).
So yeah, we aren’t conservatives, despite what the Stranger’s callow Editorial Board thinks.
I mean, this may have happened to you but my experience has been that there’s nowhere in this state that people would routinely a) park across two spots on purpose and b) harass random people outside a coffee shop. Assume he was a random guy and not indicative of the entire local population…
Of course he wasn’t indicative of the local population at whole (I’m out in Preston a couple of times a week), but it does get mighty Trumpy not that far out of the city. Most don’t fly flags from their pickups, and few would ever harass a stranger, but the conservative MAGA vibe is there if you look closely.
OMG those trucks with 4 doors are sooooo GOP. Always in 2 spots.
> unless one counts anarchy, which I don’t as it’s the absence of organization
I doubt you have ever met any anarchists.
If they are organized, then it’s not anarchy…
Sore loser is a bad look.
See also: conservatives trying to oust Sawant in 2020/2021 with a. Special Election.
Goose, gander, etc.
A lot of people find politics by bullhorn off putting. Sawant wore her welcome out and she would’ve lost had she run for reelection. It’s pretty simple.
This.
I voted for her twice. But her tenure descended into childish grandstanding and shouting down’s. It became painfully apparent she had no allegiance to the residents and/or small business owners of D3. She was there to serve her ideology and The Socialist Alternative, full stop.
So to the ardent socialists of D3; we tried it your way. Now let’s try it a slightly less left way for a while.
Slightly less left would have been Alex Hudson. Joy is full-on center-right.
Baloney!
Center-right? 🤣
Joy’s efforts to get out into the district and attend community meetings is a great sign that she is going to actually listen to constituents and represent them at Council. Sawant NEVER did this, unless it was for a photo-op for some leftist cause she favored. What a refreshing change!
Sawant is incapable of listening because, if she’s in public, rest assured she will be screaming at the top of her lungs.
YES, YES, AGREED!! Yay for a seemingly qualified person (Joy) from the community, that cares about the community, and wants to actually LISTEN to the community!! IMAGINE THAT!! It makes me so hopeful for the future! But also so pissed off about the past with Sawont, she was a total waste of time, money and resources…FOR YEARS. But I’m looking ahead, here’s to you Joy!!
Headline could use some work, I clicked this wanting to learn why turnout was terrible at Joy’s community meetings.
I think the “turnout is terrible” phrase is referring to the poor turnout in the election.