At a candidate forum last week organized by the Federal Way Mirror, Sarah Smith, who’s challenging Rep. Adam Smith from the left in Washington’s 9th Congressional District, claimed she voted against Kent’s education levy in a special election in February. But she didn’t vote in the election at all.
*Update* 12:14 p.m.
Over the phone on Thursday, Smith told me she dropped her ballot in the mail and didn’t follow up with King County to make sure her vote was counted. More updates below.
Here’s a screenshot from King County’s voting record:
King County Elections confirms Smith didn’t vote. The February Special election in Kent would appear on its own line. The words “special election” in the August primary line refer to the fact that certain jurisdictions in King County ran special measures on the ballot.
Whoever’s running Sarah Smith’s Facebook appears to think she didn’t vote in the special election, either. A user named James Jaime asked Smith’s campaign why she “didn’t care enough about teachers to vote for the Kent school levy earlier this year.” Smith’s campaign replied, “I was not an elected official. I never had the opportunity to vote on it.”
Smith’s failure to vote in the special election for an education levy is confusing. First of all, unlike what Sarah Smith for US Congress wrote, she didn’t have to be an elected official to vote in this special election. Every registered voter from Kent could have voted. Smith says she is a resident of Kent, so she in fact did have the opportunity to vote.
And here’s another confusing thing. In an interview with The Stranger‘s Eli Sanders, Smith expressed great concern for the employees of Kent’s school district. “We’re having 127 teachers laid off from Kent School District because the district is underfunded and doesn’t make enough money,” she said. “They need someone in Congress who can stand up and fight for that, who’s going to stand up and try to bring funding on a need basis for schools that really, actually are desperate for it.”
If the Kent levy hadn’t passed in February, one in five of the district’s staff members wouldn’t be funded. Even though she didn’t vote, Smith’s spokesperson said she voted against the measures because they would have raised property taxes. “While the property tax was progressive in the sense that it was based upon home value we, and Sarah, did not feel that the tax would be fairly levied as it did not include provisions based upon the value of the home or income,” he said.
While voting isn’t the only way to participate in a democracy, it is pretty foundational—and it’s especially galling to not vote when you’re asking people to vote for you. Not voting gives people the impression that the candidate isn’t really that interested in having a voice in the community.
Not voting is one thing. Lying about voting is another. Why did she say she voted when she didn’t? Why did her campaign provide further justification for a vote she didn’t even cast? Was she confused? Mistaken? Did she forget?
*Update*
Over the phone on Thursday, Smith told me a volunteer responded to the commenter on Facebook. The campaign realized Smith’s response was a mistake and deleted it the same day.
As for the vote on the levy, Smith said she put the ballot in the mail. “I didn’t follow up. That’s on me. Maybe I should have followed up, but I just didn’t,” she said.
When asked if she retained the stub from her ballot, she said she did not and that she has “never retained them in the past.” Smith said she filled out the ballot on her kitchen table, and she’s “fairly certain” the stub was in a pile of papers that wound up in the recycling bin.
