Seattle, you’re terrible at voting in special elections. According to the county’s website, in the April 2023 Special Election, nearly 1.4 million voters were registered in King County, but a measly 30.86 percent returned their ballots. Yikes! (Compare that to the 81 percent of King County’s registered voters who participated in the November General Election.)
This year, our Special Election is in February (tomorrow!), and it’s an important one. Both social housing and money for schools are on the ballot. But as of this morning, only 16 percent of registered voters in King County have returned their ballots.
We have to do better! And yes, I say “we” because, admittedly, I am part of that lazy/tired/busy 84 percent who have yet to vote. My ballot is also just sitting right here, unopened and unloved. Let’s change that together!
To brush up on what’s on the ballot, check out our February 2025 Special Election Voting Guide.
Just wanna skip to the answers? Cool. For Propositions Nos 1A and 1B first vote YES, and then vote for Proposition 1A.
We explain why in our endorsement, but for even more information on why you should support 1A, read about what we found when we dug into the contribution records. It turns out a lot of rich, non-Seattle folks and Amazon are pushing really hard for 1B. Always suspicious!
For schools, vote yes on both Proposition 1 and Proposition 2. Money for schools!—even if you’re grumpy about the whole school-closures debacle. Kids still have to show up in those buildings every day; we don’t give them a choice.
You have until 8 pm tomorrow to slip your ballot into one of the many ballot boxes around town (find your closest option here)! (While you can generally send it in by mail, it’s a little late in the game to guarantee it’d be postmarked in time—dropping it in a ballot box is your best bet at this point.) Not registered? There’s still time to do that, too! You can register and vote in person on election day at the King County Elections Office.
Good god, stop repeating the bullshit that it might be too late to mail your ballot. It’s not.
I didn’t get a ballot and checking King County’s ballot tracker tells me “You are not in the current election.” There doesn’t appear to be anything local for me to vote on in this special election. So having a low KC voter turn out of registered voters makes sense when some of us don’t have anything to vote on.
@2 That’s a good point. I think less than half of the people in King County have anything on the ballot.
@2 This is a city of Seattle election only but the King County election website still posts the results thus the author’s confusion. https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/elections/results/ballot-return-statistics/2025/february-special
There are 674K registered voters in Seattle and 121K ballots have been returned so far which is a shade under 18%. As a comparison point when they held the last special election for the recall turnout peaked at 35%.
Megan dear, tell us why we should vote for these initiatives, not how Amazon doesn’t want us to vote for them.
I know you linked to the more detailed endorsement, but 1) no one wants to bother and 2) it isn’t much better.
Here’s an exercise for The Stranger’s staff: imagine that you are working in the appliance department at Sears. You are paid on Commission. You don’t want to spend all your time telling your customer how JC Penney’s Harvest Gold side-by-side refrigerator is inferior. You want to extoll the virtues of the Avocado Lady Kenmore model you are in front of. The last thing you want is for your customer to go over to Penney’s and discover that their model is both cheaper and comes in a variety of decorator colors (including Coppertone, bisque and -yes- Avocado)
There are way too many elections in this county, they really need to consolidate. Multiple every year is absurd
Voting has never been easier – it literally takes less than 5 minutes. If it’s too difficult, it’s probably best for everyone if you simply skip it and complain on message boards.
I’m not voting to increase my rent by $200/month to fund failing schools with bloated worthless bureaucrats, nor for social housing for deadbeats to live for free.
@8 They’re renewals of existing levies, dummy.
Thank you, Buddhamat dear. Our Thirteen12 seems to have a case of first world problems.
And there’s the SeattleLove we remember. Go drink your glass of vinegar and lemon juice, dear.
@5 To be fair, I feel like every Presidential election I’ve voted in except the Obama one (and I’m the same age as Megan) has been us voting against someone and not necessarily voting FOR someone. It’s all we’ve ever been taught to do and it’s one of the reasons people my age probably don’t actually vote half the time (I do, just to be clear).
Change your headline! Ballots are due TODAY!
@11: I’ve been voting far longer than have you, and I agree. With a few exceptions, it’s always about voting against what I don’t want, rather than what I do want. (I agree specifically on voting for Obama; the 2008 and especially 2012 elections were among the favorites of my life — not just because of him, but for our local enactment of gay marriage in the latter.)
The reality is, even within Seattle, there are not many elected offices serving a diverse population. The chances of getting to vote for someone becomes relatively rare by those numbers alone. Is it optimal? No. But democracy remains a better system of government than anything else humanity has ever tried.
Schools are a solid investment for everyone; they keep and attract responsible working families to the community, and living in a city that has children is nicer all around. Plus it’s a renewal of already existing levies, as Doug mentions, and these buildings need air quality improvement to control of spread of viruses.
I went with Yes/1A because it raises more money and 1B is not nearly enough. Also, I think the larger sum will compensate for the lower percentage, will it not, for those at the very bottom; plus, I think the mixed use model is healthier for the liveability and development of the community overall, meaning, too, more uplifting for those at the bottom (since that was a criticism).
But the difference in the amount of money raised is quite significant and I think these companies bear responsibility for raising the cost of housing in Seattle so I think it’s fair for them to kick in like that, and 1A is designed to better stabilize the market, as well.
So that’s my take as a last-minute voter. I voted for healthy schools, a healthier public health infrastructure, and the housing model with more money (1A) and aimed at a higher quality of living.
@14 a higher quality – and a more stabilized standard of living, to be clearer. Sometimes people think higher quality means higher cost – and no, it doesn’t. Often it even means the opposite — but I think improved stabilization on the cost of living is a reasonable longer-term bet here. And I think taking everyone who’s poor and sticking them all together in one place or another isn’t a good approach. And that’s partly why you hear more and more people saying, “Seattle looks like shit.” The mixture approach in 1A is healthier and more uplifting.
@7 hate to ruin a good scold but if I wasn’t voting in all these elections I wouldn’t care. Consolidating elections would improve turnout and conserve paper and election worker time, but I’m sure there’s a good reason–or any reason at all–we need to have so many different elections throughout the year that one of you can explain. It wouldn’t take even five minutes of your time