We’re stuck with a huge voters’ pamphlet

By Evan Smith

The Snohomish County local voters’ pamphlet that came in last week’s mail took up 48 pages.

It could be worse. One in the Seattle area is more than twice as thick.

There’s little that elections officials in either Snohomish County or King County can do about it. Lots of what makes the pamphlet so thick is out of county control because most of the pamphlet is made up of material from the secretary of state’s office. That includes 19 pages about candidates for U.S. Senate, the nine statewide offices and a place on the State Supreme Court.

It’s particularly bad this year because we have 17 candidates for U.S. senator, 11 each for governor and 7th district congressional representative, and dozens more who want to replace retiring incumbents as lieutenant governor, state treasurer, state auditor, lands commissioner o state superintendent of public instruction.

Also, there are six pages of countywide material.

But, why all of the material on ballot measures in cities and fire districts in faraway parts of the county? And why the material on all three congressional districts in different parts of the county and all seven legislative districts in parts of the county?

The answer is that printing several editions of the local voters’ pamphlet would cost more than the county would save by mailing slightly smaller voters’ pamphlets.

So, for now voters in Edmonds need to figure out whether they are in the 21st or 32nd legislative district, and voters in Lynnwood will have to skip over the material on the 1st and 7th congressional districts.

Voters can avoid wasting time with the pamphlet two ways: compare their ballots to what’s in the pamphlet or check their personal voters’ guide online and entering their names and dates of birth.

There’s good news and bad news for the general election. We’ll have only two candidates for each office, but the pamphlet will add two State Supreme Court positions, some lower court positions, six statewide initiatives, one state constitutional amendment two state advisory votes and seven Snohomish County charter amendments.

Evan Smith can be reached at schsmith@frontier.com.