image: King County website
image: King County website

Happy Election Day!(and Happy Earth Day!) If you haven’t mailed in your ballot, dropped it at a King County Elections drop-box, or voted at a live voting location, and it is not 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 22, 2014, yet, it is not too late.

If you have your ballot with you, carefully follow the instructions on the ballot envelope, place the ballot in the security envelope, seal all envelopes, and sign the outer envelope. Then get it to a drop site by 8 p.m.

If you take your ballot to a post office, be very sure it will be postmarked today, and make sure you put a first-class stamp worth at least 49 cents on it. If it is already past 6 p.m., there are no post offices at which you can get it postmarked today. Indeed, most postal locations close by 5:30.

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=7751

If you don’t have your ballot with you, have lost it, or just want to cast your ballot in the privacy of a voting booth, voting sites are located at Union Station (the big art deco building next to Link’s International District / Chinatown Station, and the Sounder/Amtrak King Street Station) at the southeast corner of Jackson St. and 4th Ave S; Bellevue City Hall; and the King County Elections Headquarters in Renton.

If you are not sure how you plan to vote on King County Transportation District Proposition 1, Seattle Transit Blog has endorsed a “Yes” vote and spilled a lot of ink regarding the issue. Just peruse the RECENT POSTS at the right.

56 Replies to “Where to Cast Your Vote Today (By 8 PM)”

  1. The postage actually isn’t all that imperative. The USPS will deliver it to King County Elections regardless. I’ve tried this twice during primaries and on both accounts it was counted (not that I advise chancing it).

    1. But unless it’s actually received before 8pm on election day, a postmark dated on or before electioon day is required. Will the USPS cancel stamps that aren’t there?

    2. Not sure if things have changed since 1999, but I remember putting my ballot in the mail on Election Day that year, but unfortunately forgetting to put a stamp on. It was returned to me the next day. :(

    3. It would be nice if, just for one day, people could catch the bus (or train) to Union Station for free.

      That 49 cents strikes me as an Unconstitutional poll tax when alternate ways of voting within walking distance, or along a free transit line, are not available.

      County government “living within its means” has somehow overriden everyone’s right to vote, even if they are penniless.

      2. I have always wondered that, how they could make people pay postage. But I always take it to the dropoff box downtown (County admin building, 4th & James) to avoid the postage. Not that I don’t mail other things; I still pay most of my bills by mail. But voting seems like it shouldn’t require it.

      3. Ah…this is a product of cost cutting measures which eliminated old polling places (often schools). In doing so, we’ve put a poll tax on citizens (regardless of unwilling or unable) to go too ballot dropoff sites. My area does not have a drop box (nearest was in Lake Forest Park)…but was served by the elections vehicle.

      4. Sorry, but I don’t consider 49 cents a huge burden, especially when there there are free alternatives for someone willing to make the extra effort. Homeless people generally live within walking distance of downtown anyway.

      1. I was going to say… 56% turnout would be huge and likely very good for Metro. 28% is not so good.

      2. I’d expect that the better the turnout, the better the chances of passage: the usual turnout at these special election times is low and its demographic is richer, older and more suburban.

        One interesting thing to watch. LWSD has a huge bond issue on the ballot. That should boost turnout in an area where transit usage is high by suburban standards.

      3. According to the latest numbers on the King County Elections website, turnout is right at 30% for LWSD voters. The turnout in LWSD is slightly above the whole of King County but not by much.

      4. The usual demographic for such an election may be older, wealthier and suburban, however, the demographic that will be profoundly affected by this vote is primarily the opposite demographic, with some older urban working people thrown in, and it would be, I hate to say, cutting their own throats to not bother voting.

      1. Not even close to over. The results counted first were the early mail in ballots. Technically I know it’s a “mail in” election but a lot of late ballots will be dropped in the election boxes at one minute till mid-night 8PM. The early vote is almost always the most anti any tax crowd and the late vote is mostly last minute liberals. And without the data on which precincts these votes are from we don’t know anything. My bet is that none are City of Seattle which will almost undoubtedly vote yes.

      2. It’s 95 percent of the votes. Prop 1 lost, and now is time for 15 percent service cuts. I hope metro focuses most of its service to the inner core. All service north of 115th street and south of Sodo should be significantly diminished, if not all eliminated.

      3. Thanks for the rose-colored glasses outlook, but I highly doubt things will change. I know a good deal of early returns came from Seattle.

      7. I think it is over. Countywide turnout was expected to be around 35%. It’s at 32.7% right now and the no votes are ahead by about 37,500 based on about 362,000 votes counted so far. If the turnout projection holds, even if every remaining vote counted voted yes the gap would only close by about 25,000.

      8. @Jim,

        It can’t do what you propose. Although the funding formulas aren’t as rigid as “sub-area equity” for ST, Seattle already gets more service that it pays for. According to mic’s figures on another thread, the East Side pays the most for an hour of service, SKC the least, and Seattle in the middle. I don’t know if Shoreline is with Seattle or has its own little service area; I expect it’s with the city like in ST. Where Kenmore and Bothell land is also a question.

        In any case, what you’re proposing would not get past the County Council even if it were fully legal.

      9. I find it hard to believe that 95% of the entire vote can be counted and reported 15 minutes after the polls close. Yes I’d expect turnout to be low. Part of the stupidity of running a “save the universe” measure in an April election. The Prop 1 people I talked to at Bellevue Brewing said it had to be this way because of the timing of when funding ran out. Short sited much? The “crises” was like five years ago? I drove today instead of busing it so I could pick up the mail at my PO Box which I do once a week. Five, count ’em five flyers for vote yes on Prop 1. Ah, the count for last Tuesday, before I mailed in my ballot, zero. Doh!!!

        Any who, looks like it will fail. Though I’m not calling the election. If it holds I go back to my basic premiss; it was too big an ask. Metro’s already scaled back the 17% to 15%. People know there is some percent that still needs to just be eliminated (like the 236). A measure that made some of the obvious cuts and asked for an extension of the $20 tab fee probably would have passed.

        I’m waiting for Ben to sweep in and say it was the road coattails that doomed the measure and transit should have gone it alone. That transit should have gone it alone I’d have to agree. Trying to piggy back on a roads tax; “Bullwinkle, that trick never works.”

      10. Seattle already gets more service that it pays for.

        Well, yes and no. Seattle is subsidized by the County. That’s a fact and Metro was formed to bail out Seattle transit. But, and it’s a big ass butt, a huge portion of what Metro does is haul people from the Eastside into Seattle and in an ever increasing role haul young people new and vital to the high tech jobs on the Eastside out of Seattle to their jobs. What Metro has to stop doing is hauling bodies twice a day from Bonny Lake to UW. And there’s not enough bandwidth yet on the interweb to cover how much of Metro’s budget is siphoned off by Access.

    3. Also, I hope that the city fully legalizes Lyft, uber, and sidecar. These are great alternatives to transit. They are predictable, timely, and convenient. In many ways, these companies ate the future and superior to Metro.

    1. That first count represents 95% of ballots returned in the mail either by last night or some time today, and over 31% of eligible voters. We’ll see how votes cast at voting sites go, and have to wait a week or so for mail ballots to straggle in. Nevertheless, King County Elections has done a very efficient job on the vote tallying so far.

      1. Nora, there are numerous alternatives to Metro. I live in downtown and seldom take the bus. I carpool and use ride shares and cabs on the weekends, if walking is inconvenient. I love it. I don’t have a car, so I don’t mind spending money on cabs or ubers and enjoy the door to door convenience.

      2. Not everybody lives downtown.

        Cabs and uebers cost several times bus fare if you’re going more than a couple miles. And they can’t possibly scale to hundreds of thousands of people using them simultaneously. Are you expecting eventually for half the county’s jobs to be driving the other half arouhd?

  11. You know what? You people who are celebrating this, it is going to hurt a lot more people a lot more than it would have hurt you if the Yes vote had won.

  12. Plan B is a proposition that requires the “No” voters of Prop 1 to provide personal limo services to the riders displaced by the Prop 1 vote.

  13. Is there any hope of a plan “C” in the form of a Seattle-only plan to at least preserve service there. Take out the suburban areas, I’m sure you could get something to pass.

    1. If you take out the suburban service, you don’t need anything else to pass. There is probably enough money to eliminate most suburban service and focus heavily in the city of seattle. Suburban commuters can move into the city if they wish to commute via transit.

    2. Only from property taxes or an increase in utility bills. Maybe a big increase in parking taxes would help, but they can’t be moved up too much or businesses will decamp to Bellevue.

      The city doesn’t have a whole lot of revenue authorities.

      1. I own property inside the city limits. Tack that $60, $100, $200, what-have-you, onto my property tax bill and I wouldn’t blink an eye. I’d love it of property taxes could pay more of the transportation cost for this region, or at least the city.

    3. Did the TBD really have to include the entire county? Why not a smaller Seattle-only TBD? If they could (try to) do it for prop 1 2 years ago, why now try again?

      1. I wonder if a Seattle-only TBD wouldn’t raise enough to maintain service levels, hence the countywide measure. Seattle gets more than it pays for in terms of Metro service and vice versa outside the city.

        As far as property tax goes, according to this article it seems like you could use a property tax levy for transit for one year. Check it out for yourself:

        http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/Future/FAQ.aspx#C66D3499811747FB9577C3998BE77183

  14. Some of you may be waiting for more results to be posted tonight. The next results posting, including ballots tallied from accessible voting centers, is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.

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