‘So slay’: Snohomish County voters stream to ballot boxes

ARLINGTON — Dropping their ballots off Tuesday at the Arlington Public Library collection box, Tina and Richard Davis had smiles on their faces.

They voted differently, with Tina Davis joking their votes canceled each other out. Tina is more liberal, while Richard is more conservative. They’ve been married for 38 years and certainly know at this point what topics to avoid as they flip through the voters’ pamphlet. But even so, they felt it was important to vote.

“It doesn’t matter which way you vote, because it’s going to be a problem no matter which way,” Tina Davis said. “Whoever the president is, half of the people that voted for the other one are going to be upset and vice versa.”

They’ve seen politics pull families apart.

“It’s not worth it,” Tina Davis said.

“We have two completely different views,” Richard Davis added.

For Richard Davis, the big issues were border security, taxation and medical costs. For Tina, it was cost of living. More locally, she voted to approve building a new middle school in Arlington.

Polls and ballot boxes across Snohomish County were busy Tuesday morning. Over 100 voters were lined up at the county campus in downtown Everett to vote in person. Some voters reported never receiving their ballots in the mail.

County Auditor Garth Fell said that is a relatively common issue when voters do not update their voter registration.

“That is something we see every election, and certainly a little more widely in presidential elections,” Fell said Tuesday.

As of early afternoon Tuesday, the auditor’s office had served about 750 in-person voters. Updates to the building increased lobby capacity, Fell said.

He estimated the county will hit between 80% and 85% voter turnout. It will take several days for all ballots to be counted, Fell said. Any votes postmarked by Election Day will be counted.

Over 56% of Snohomish County voters had cast their ballots by Monday night. County turnout was 85.17% in the 2020 general election and 78.97% in 2016.

“It’s encouraging to see so many people want to vote and and we’ve certainly had a line here out the door at the county campus, but that’s to be expected on Election Day,” Fell said.

The mood depended on who you talked to. But overall, it was calm but with deep uncertainty in the air.

“Very nervous, very anxious,” said Clover Mencadauge, 21.

The main issue Mencadauge was voting on?

“For me personally, it’s a lot of transgender safety, and then health care and housing,” Mencadauge said.

In Everett, Joseph, who declined to give his last name, waited in line to vote in person. The 39-year-old said top election issues for him were taxes, cost of living and abortion. He said he was anti-abortion.

Statewide, he argued, there needs to be change. He works in IT and worries about security, which is why he declined to share his last name.

“We’ve had 40 years of one-sided politics that have got us where we ended up with people dying in the streets, and taxes are through the roof,” he said.

He stressed it was important to vote no matter what.

“Whether or not you agree in the voting system or whether or not you think it’s rigged, you’ve still gotta to vote,” Joseph said. “I mean, because if you don’t vote, then it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Kayla Rowland, 23, who was dropping her ballot off at the collection box on the Snohomish County Campus, said her top issue was abortion rights. She’s a student at Everett Community College and was very excited to cast her vote.

“It was powerful, so slay,” Rowland said. “I loved it.”

Along with her friends, Rowland spent some time specifically researching judicial candidates before dropping off her ballot. Her brother died by suicide, she said, and she felt more could have been done in the court system to help him.

As for the election itself, she said she felt like a lot of people were not getting good information about the issues.

“I just think there’s definitely a lot of assumptions. I feel like there’s lack of education with, like, abortion,” Rowland said. “People think women are out here, like, ‘Oh, yay, we just want an abortion,’ just for convenience, but there’s a lot more to it.”

The Snohomish County Auditor’s Office is set to release the first batch of results Tuesday evening, with more votes to be counted in the coming days.

Jordan Hansen: 425-339-3046; jordan.hansen@heraldnet.com; X: @jordyhansen.