Election agencies challenged more than 80,000 ballots in the Washington State Presidential primary last week. Of those, 20,000 come from residents in King County, home to the largest percentage of voters who selected “Uncommitted Delegates” in the Democratic primary in protest of President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
Supporters of the movement to vote “uncommitted” believe that “curing” those challenged ballots could lead to Washington sending uncommitted delegates to the Democratic National Convention and may even be enough to make us one of the least-committed states in the country. Voters have until 4:30 pm on Thursday, March 21 to fix their ballots online or return (not just postmark) their resolution form to get their vote counted before certification on Friday.
Election departments reject ballots for all kinds of reasons. This election, King County challenged almost 17,000 ballots because the voter failed to select their party affiliation on the ballot envelope as required by state law. Those party affiliation challenges amounted to 82% of all challenged ballots. The County challenged another 2,000 because the voter’s signature did not match the one on file and another 800 because the voter did not sign the ballot at all.
King County Elections (KCE) spokesperson Halei Watkins said that KCE contacts voters with challenged ballots via mail. If a voter provided their phone number or email address on their ballot, then KCE also pings them that way. Voters should track their ballot online and sign up for alerts to learn of any ballot issues as soon as possible.
To fix a challenged ballot, Watkins said to use the online signature resolution tool. I know it says “signature resolution tool,” but voters can also use it to fix their party affiliation issues. If they prefer, voters can also mail in their resolution form or take a clear photo of it and then email the form to voter.services@kingcounty.gov.
Rami Al-Kabra, the Deputy Mayor of Bothell and an organizer for the grassroots Uncommitted Washington campaign, worried that many of the challenged ballots could belong to Muslim immigrant communities. Al-Kabra said their campaign plans to chase these uncured ballots the same way they earned votes in the first place by spreading information about the challenges online, making phone calls, and sending texts.
Those tactics proved quite effective the first time. Al-Kabra said the campaign set a goal of earning 12,000 votes, which would have amounted to double the number of votes for uncommitted delegates in the last presidential election. According to the Secretary of State, more than 86,000 people, or 9.75% of Democratic voters, picked uncommitted delegates as of the latest update to the count last Friday. That means more than 13 times as many Washingtonians voted uncommitted in 2024 than in 2020. Uncommitted delegates garnered more support in Washington this year than Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg in 2020. And those candidates spent a lot more time and money than the campaign for uncommitted delegates did, though all those candidates (except Gabbard) had dropped out of the race before the election period.
Al-Kabra said that the campaign feels “optimistic” that the Washington Democrats will have to send an uncommitted delegate to the Democratic National Convention in August.
The party allocates both statewide delegates and Congressional District-based delegates. According to Washington State Democrats Communication Manager Stephen Reed, the party very likely won’t allocate any statewide uncommitted delegates, but the campaign may yet earn the 15% necessary to scoop up delegates in the 7th Congressional District, which encompasses most of Seattle and Burien, and all of Vashon Island, Lake Forest Park, Shoreline, and Normandy Park. (Uncommitted currently has 13.5% of the vote share in King County.) In that case, the party would send two uncommitted delegates to the convention. Reed said that the party will know for sure by March 25.
If Washington sends two uncommitted delegates, then they would join two such delegates from Michigan, seven from Hawaii, and 11 from Minnesota. With 2,107 delegates so far, Biden has already surpassed the 1,968-delegate threshold needed to secure the nomination, but the movement to vote uncommitted serves a deeper purpose than unseating Biden. The tactic is just one of many in a movement to end the genocide in Gaza.
“This election, King County challenged almost 17,000 ballots because the voter failed to select their party affiliation on the ballot envelope as required by state law.”
So, the hope of saving the Stranger’s “uncommitted” performance-art flop relies on voters who didn’t even bother to select the Democratic Party also voting — in large numbers! — for delegates in that same Democratic Party’s primary election.
No matter how this ends, the Stranger will declare Total Victory on All Fronts in this “Performance Art for Palestine” nonsense.
One uncommitted delegate hangs in the balance?
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/tilt-at-windmills#
LOL, you had one job, Unaffiliated voters…
Voted for Al Gore in 2000, voted for John Kerry in 2004, voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and will vote for Joe Biden in 2024. I have no regrets at all, because I understand what was at stake. It’d be nice if The Stranger did too.
Statewide there are a little under 20,000 votes to be counted. Even if every remaining ballot voted uncommitted the count would not make the 15% required for an uncommitted delegate.
@5: Same here. Thanks for putting it succinctly.
@5 I voted exactly the same way in those years’ general elections. But more relevantly: Did you vote (or caucus) for all those people in the primaries? I didn’t, and I’m betting you probably didn’t either. (If anyone cares, my own primary choices were nobody in ’00, Kucinich in ’04, Obama in ’08, Sanders in ’16, and Warren in ’20.) Yes, I know what’s at stake and I’m sure the Stranger does too, and in November we’ll both do what we know we have to. Count on it. But in a primary election, the idea isn’t to reflexively endorse the incumbent, especially a weak, unpopular one who is trailing the likely Republican nominee in the polls. The idea is to vote for your favorite candidate or the one you think is most likely to win in the fall. (Once in a while if you’re lucky, they’re one and the same person.)
For those of us who think the Democrats have a better chance against Trump with someone other than Biden, the only real choice this time was to vote uncommitted. The Stranger made the right endorsement, albeit for different reasons than mine.
“Uncommitted delegates garnered more support in Washington this year than Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, and Pete Buttigieg in 2020.”
And more support in forever than Stan Lippman, Mike the Mover, Alex Tsimerman, and GoodSpaceGuy combined, despite everything they’ve ever said making far more sense than the ‘logic’ behind “Uncommitted.”
Fill in the bubble
Check box indicating which flavor of political propaganda you prefer
Sign the envelope
Couldn’t get much easier, yet the good and ever so well educated people of Washington still manage to mess it up.
And people bash on Florida…
@8 — here’s what the article you’re commenting on says, in case you missed it:
“…but the movement to vote uncommitted serves a deeper purpose than unseating Biden.”
In that sentence, Hannah says explicitly one of the goals is to defeat Joe Biden. No one in the Democratic Party polls better than Joe Biden against Donald Trump.
If your explicit goal is to defeat or weaken the candidate who runs best against Donald Trump, then your goal is to have Donald Trump win the election. And if your goal is to have Donald Trump win the election while acting as though you care about left-wing causes, then you’re a lying nihilist piece of shit.
@11 As I said, and have said before, the Stranger and I are on different wavelengths on this question. What Hannah wrote isn’t relevant to my position and I’m not going to engage with it except to say I don’t think it’s possible at this point to stop Biden’s nomination. He has to make the decision himself to step aside, and voting uncommitted is the only effective way we have to encourage him to do so.
I don’t believe the polling you cite paints an accurate picture. There’s no other serious declared Democratic candidate right now, so it isn’t surprising Biden polls better nationally than potential opponents who aren’t themselves campaigning or receiving comparable media attention. But Whitmer, Newsom, et al. do outperform Biden in their home states in hypothetical matchups against Trump. I believe that as nominees they would do better than Biden once the DNC machinery gets behind them and boosts their name recognition. If Biden can get his numbers above Trump’s by summer, fine. But if he can’t, I hope he will bow to reality and graciously step aside and let the convention choose a successor. Biden has always been a poor campaigner and age is making him worse. It’s crucial to keep all other possibilities on the table until he’s actually the nominee.
Oh FFS. Please consider our choices: Joe Biden, or an orange skid mark marching us into totalitarianism. You think the latter is interested in a ceasefire in Gaza?
I absolutely agree the horrific war in Gaza must stop now. But don’t play games with democracy. We are that close to losing it. Really.
@12: “What Hannah wrote isn’t relevant to my position and I’m not going to engage with it except to say … voting uncommitted is the only effective way we have to encourage him to [leave office].”
Did you even read what you wrote? ”What Hannah wrote isn’t relevant“ to you and Hannah completely agreeing both that Biden should leave office, and that voting “uncommitted” is a fine and peachy way to accomplish just that?
You just validated exactly what @11 wrote, whilst simultaneously and explicitly denying it.
Also, your speculation about how someone unknown in most states would be a better candidate than the sitting President who already beat the same person he’ll face this time is just your speculation, and even less reality-based than your first paragraph was.
Thank you for putting on a personal clinic in the irrationality and unreality of the “vote uncommitted” position.
@14 Well, again, if Biden were comfortably ahead in the polls vs. Trump, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. (At least I wouldn’t.) But — reality check — he isn’t. Not even his admittedly nicely-read SOTU gave him a detectable bump. Where I disagree with the Stranger is that I don’t think it’s possible to stop him at this point even at the convention. If he doesn’t step down of his own volition, we’re stuck with him.
I hope for all of our sakes he can pull his numbers up by summer. If he does, I’ll say OK, fine, just nominate Biden and be done with it. (Here again, I disagree with the Stranger in that I don’t regard his position on the Gaza war as disqualifying, especially knowing how much worse Trump would be on this issue.) Overall, I don’t think Biden has been a bad president, relatively speaking. He’s accomplished more for progressives than Obama, Clinton, or Carter did. He might do an even better job in a second term if he has a Democratic-controlled Congress to work with. But he’s just not a good campaigner. There’s a very different skill set involved in governing vs. campaigning. The 2020 election’s peculiar dynamics compensated for his weaknesses in that area (thank God). But this year’s are aggravating them.
To underline what I said above, there is this from today’s Guardian:
“Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable.’ Donald Trump’s son-in-law also says Israel should bulldoze an area of the Negev desert and move Palestinians there. Jared Kushner has praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip.”
Stop moaning about Joe Biden and throw all of your weight behind him. If he is not elected, we are truly fucked.
@16 Please tell that to the voters who appear to be deserting Biden even in the general election. I didn’t even mention the heavy baggage he’s now carrying due to Gaza, inflation and the perceived “border crisis” (even though saddling him with the latter two is deeply unfair and Trump would be far worse on all three). Unlike those people, I assure you I don’t need to be convinced to vote for whomever the Democratic nominee is in November. I don’t think the Stranger staff does either.
@17 — “I don’t think the Stranger staff does either.”
Unfortunately The Stranger has made it clear what they really think. They’d prefer performative bullshit that accomplishes nothing to substantive work that accomplishes something. They made that clear in this post:
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/05/04/72555229/democrats-want-your-vote-socialists-want-your-feet-on-the-street
Voting is hard. Politics is hard. It’s a constant grind. You don’t get everything you want at once. The Democratic Party has been a constant source of positive change in this country that has enacted policies improving the lives of many millions of people, but it isn’t instantaneous, and they don’t get everything at once.
When given the choice, The Stranger has made it clear they prefer a world where Republicans overturn Roe V. Wade and there’s occasionally a big public protest to a world where you vote for Democrats, there’s no big protests, and Roe V. Wade survives. The Stranger prefers performance to policy that actually saves women’s lives.
They’re doing this dishonest verbal dance about Gaza, uncommitted, and Joe Biden because they want to damage his electoral prospects so he’ll lose to Trump. Never mind that he’s the best president in 60 years for the lowest rungs on the economic ladder, never mind that he’s led the best economic recovery in the world of any country from COVID, never mind that he’ll veto a national abortion ban, never mind that he’ll veto Obamacare repeal, never mind that he’s orders of magnitude better for Palestinians than Trump. With him in office the protests in the streets aren’t as big as they would be under Trump even though Trump would be worse on literally every policy decision. The street protests — not any policy decision — is what truly matters to The Stranger.
It’s pure nihilism that will negatively affect the lives of millions of people and those of us who actually care about the substance of policy should call it out every chance we get.