Tag: Vote By Mail

On A New System (Sort Of), Or, Referendum 71 And Mail-In Voting

We are now about two weeks away from the November election in Washington State, and one item on the ballot that has national attention is Referendum 71, the so-called “everything but marriage” proposal that would give same-sex couples more rights and protections than they have today.

There has been a lot of conversation about whether it will or won’t pass–and a lot of conversation about whether it should pass.

I hope it does, and if you live here I encourage you to vote “yes” November 3rd.

But that said, you may not be aware that Washington has an electoral system in transition, and that as a result of the transition Washington has some idiosyncrasies that will make forecasting the results a bit tougher, and determining the results a bit slower.

We’ll talk about that today, and by the time we’re done you should have an appreciation of the odd way in which things can work out–and that, absent a landslide, we aren’t likely to know the results on Election Day.