Special Washington lottery determines ballot positions

Published 3:12 pm Monday, June 6, 2016

Numbered ping-pong balls popped out of a machine in Olympia recently.

This lottery didn’t determine million-dollar winners, but it did determine candidate-order for offices on the Aug. 2 primary ballot.

When the first ball had the number “8,” Democrat Philip Cornell, who had been the eighth candidate to file for U.S. senator, got the first position among the 17 senate candidates on the primary ballot. That “8” also gave Democrat Brady Piñero Walkinshaw the top ballot position among 7th Congressional District candidates.

The draw determined position on the primary ballot for statewide offices and in any congressional or legislative district that crosses county lines.

Snohomish County draws letters to form a special alphabet for in-county elections.

The candidates appear in the same order in Snohomish County’s local voters’ pamphlet and in the state online voters’ guide.

The 2016 Snohomish County elections alphabet is B-X-E-I-Y-L-P-K-V-G-Z-S-U-R-T-D-F-W-N-C-M-O-Q-H-J-A.

So, the four candidates for one of the state-representative positions in the 21st District will appear in this order: Kahn, Guthrie, Scherrer, Ortiz-Self.

A candidate named Aaron, who always was first when the teacher called the roll, will be at the bottom of any Snohomish County 2016 primary ballot.

Ballot order in the November general election will follow the order of the number of votes in the primary.

The lot-draw at the end of candidate filing week in May created the Snohomish County alphabet for primary-election ballot order. The state number-draw in Olympia happened at the same time.

Each county can choose its own form of lot draw or follow the state draw.

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