WA Sec. of State Wyman: ‘Really blue turnout’ could dominate late-counts in battlegrounds

As the eyes of the country continue to be focused on the presidential race and ballots are still being counted, Washington’s Secretary of State Kim Wyman stopped by KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show to share some post-election insight, starting with her own race for reelection.

Wyman currently leads over Democratic challenger Gael Tarleton by a 52% to 48% count in the race for Secretary of State, though she’s not yet declaring victory.

Check election results across Washington state

“We’re cautiously optimistic that things are going the right direction,” Wyman said. “I would say in a day or two, when we get through more ballots, I’ll be more comfortable saying we won, but it’s looking good.”

Dori asked how Wyman accounts for her success in a state where Republicans get swamped in almost every other position on the ballot.

“I think it’s a combination of factors,” she said. “I do think the advantage of having done the job for eight years now, I have a track record, that’s what we ran on. We really put out front and center that that was why people should vote for us. And we ran a positive campaign. I think that 1-2 combination was definitely helpful.”

“I mean, elections are simple,” Wyman continued. “You have the base voters on the left, you have the base voters on the right. Now, the base voters on the left are never going to vote for a Republican. The base voters on the right, you just have to hope you don’t do anything that makes them so mad that they don’t vote for you. And then you have to spend your time on the middle voters. And I think that appealing with a good government message and one of neutrality, and impartiality, and doing the job well, it resonates with those middle voters who are well-educated and want good government.”

Is it usual for a state to flip as more ballots are counted?

Turning the attention to what’s happening around the country, Dori asked if Wyman would help sort through the clutter. He explained how when he went to bed Tuesday, it looked as if Trump would hold his lead in Wisconsin and Michigan, but the ballots overnight, primarily mail-in votes, broke nearly 80% for Biden. Is a flip like that unusual?

“Well, you know, everything about 2020 is unusual, Dori,” Wyman replied. “I think a couple of things — and I would have to look at the data, and I’ll be honest, I haven’t looked at the data. But you look at that 30,000-foot level of messaging that the president had to his base over, and over, and over in the last six months: ‘Trust absentee ballot, but don’t trust vote by mail. Don’t trust the states that have suddenly increased their mail-in voting.'”

The message to President Trump’s voting base, she explained, was to vote in your state either at the polls on Election Day, or in Washington state’s case, wait until Election Day to cast your vote.

WA Sec of State Wyman ‘disappointed’ with Trump declaring victory prematurely

“Just watching the traffic we saw in our office, voters were believing that and believing that vote-by-mail is a bad thing,” Wyman said. “And so you’re suppressing your own base’s activity in the mail-in ballot counting. So it’s not a surprise to me that in those states you saw Republicans go to the polls and you saw Democrats really using the absentee ballots. So my guess is you’re going to have a really blue turnout in those absentee ballots.”

What’s happening in Pennsylvania?

Dori also asked Wyman about the situation in Pennsylvania, where election officials announced at 1:30 a.m. EST Wednesday that they were going to stop counting and come back the next morning. Wyman’s not sure why the state made that choice, but recognized that it does take a big effort to switch to mail-in voting so quickly, as many states have done for this election during the ongoing pandemic.

“I’m guessing that they were just overwhelmed and realized that they had so much left to count that they just wanted to have fresh workers. I am guessing. I don’t know. I can’t explain it,” she admitted. “I know that when we first started moving to absentee voting, that was really heavy. We had similar threads where we would have tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of ballots still in the courthouse and not be able to get through them. And it takes time to really get those processes dialed in. And these states weren’t ready for some of that.”

If it were up to her, she would not change the practices in the middle of an election.

“You can’t change your traditional practices during the middle of an election, or certainly on Election Day, because exactly what you’re talking about, it just starts to look suspect,” she said. “It could have the best intentions. But if you suddenly — if you’ve always stayed up until whatever it took election night and reported results and then all of a sudden you go, ‘yeah, we’re going to go home and come back tomorrow,’ people are going to fill in the space and they’re going to write the narrative. And so it’s never a good idea to change your practices. So, no, I would stay with what we’ve always done.”

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from noon – 3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.