Some 30th Legislative District voters, in the Nov. 2 election, bypassed names of candidates in several races and instead wrote in their own contender.
As of press time Thursday, nearly 190 write-in votes had been cast. Write-ins were seen in the Federal Way mayoral race as well as the legislative races. Without an exit poll, it’s hard to know if voters were upset with their candidate choices or didn’t take the voting process seriously, said T.M. Sell, Highline Community College political science and journalism professor.
Tracking write-ins
For the most part, King County Elections does not pay much attention to write-in votes. People sort ballots and verify signatures. Machines read the ballots and tabulate results, spokeswoman Sabra Schneider said.
If the machines detect a high number of write-ins, they alert staff and the ballots are reviewed. But even then, this would only be done if, in a given race, it looks like the write-in category and a contending candidate are in a tight race, Schneider said.
“We’d only be examining the write-ins if it looks like a write-in would be a winner,” she said.
King County Elections does not specifically keep a list of names provided as write-ins in any given election or any given race, Schneider said.
“I don’t know if anyone got more than one write-in vote, nor do we know what those write-in votes are,” she said.
The number of write-ins seen in the Federal Way area will not factor into who wins in each race. Nor are they abnormally high, Sell said. Races that reflect a write-in rate higher 3 percent may signify voters are unhappy with the candidates running for office, he said.
This is illustrated well in the 31st Legislative District, where Pam Roach and Matt Richardson were on the ballot. Though Roach’s vote count more than doubled Richardson’s, as of Thursday, there were 343 write-ins, accounting for 3.46 percent of the votes cast in that face-off.
Dissatisfaction
Federal Way’s mayoral race brought in the most write-in votes. In total, 14,949 ballots had been counted by Thursday afternoon. It appears State Rep. Skip Priest (with 52.11 percent of the vote) will win the race over Federal Way City Councilman Jim Ferrell (with 47.13 percent of the vote). But there were a few voters who didn’t vote for Priest or Ferrell.
As of press time, there were 105 write-ins. These write-ins could signify residents are still resisting the city’s change in government, Sell said. Voters who wrote in a candidate could also be showing their discontent for having to elect a mayor instead of keeping a professional city manager, he said.
The measure to change Federal Way’s form of government from a city council/city manager set-up to an elected mayor/city council form appeared on last year’s general election ballot. It was a hotly contested issue and the “yes” votes outweighed the “no” votes by 458. A year later, there are still some hard feelings over the issue.
“It’s fairly divided over whether this should happen,” Sell said.
District 30 races
Other local races garnered write-in votes as well. In the bout between incumbent State Sen. Tracey Eide and Federal Way School Board President Tony Moore, there were 37 voters who decided a write-in candidate could do a better job than either Eide or Moore, according to the King County Elections website. In the race between incumbent State Rep. Mark Miloscia and Shawn Sullivan for position 1, 16 write-in votes were cast. The face-off between Carol Gregory and Milton Mayor Katrina Asay for state representative position 2 brought in 30 write-in votes, according to the website.
