Spady: Early ballot surge is good news for rational opposition

There’s a voting wave coming Seattle. Early election data returns are showing the largest off-election primary vote in recent memory. You may have felt like your neighbors family and friends are frustrated and done with the City Council. Well, you’re right.

It’s in the data.

As of July 30, a week away from the primary election, King County has already received 146,102 ballots. That’s 11 percent of ballots that have already been received and counted. For comparison, 172,349 were counted (13.4 percent) one week away from last year’s midterm general election. And those numbers were boosted due to the “blue wave” of 2018.

This is only the primary of an off-off-year election. In the last off-year general election in 2017 (again, not the primary), we had 67,595 of ballots back from voters — a return of 5 percent.

Local documentarian and activist Christopher Rufo joined the show this week to express his amazement at these figures.

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“I am actually floored because off-year primary elections are notoriously low turn-out,” Rufo said. “My sense is that looking through political history anytime there is a massive surge in voting like this it’s almost always to try to knock out the incumbent. It’s a sign of voter dissatisfaction.”

We are dissatisfied. We are coming together and we are fighting back one ballot at a time against the bad leaders, and the bad policies that have lead us down this dark path. Homelessness and addiction is rampant. Property and violent crime are prevalent, and the perpetrators are going unpunished every day. Law enforcement morale is low because they are unable to do their jobs. We have a problem that is far more complex than left vs right. Our region is in crisis and the people of King Country are ready to be heard.

“This year, the more people that are voting, the better chance we have to get some common sense, pragmatic candidates,” Rufo said.

That’s exactly what we need, and exactly what we are going to get if we keep going to the polls at this pace. Keep it up Seattle. Keep it up King County. Get your ballot in by August 6.

Listen to the Saul Spady Show weekday afternoons from 6-9 a.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here.