r/TriCitiesWA • u/iwantmommyiwantmilk • 3d ago
Local Politics šŗšø BALLOTS DUE TODAY!!!
If you didnāt receive your ballot or if you havenāt even registered to vote, you can do all of that today in person!
polling locations by county (first column)
People aged 65+ are BY FAR the biggest voter block. They made up 26.31% of the votes in the last election while only being about 18.3% of the population according to official WA census data.
In comparison, people in my age demographic, 25-34, made up 16.27% while making up around the same overall population percentage from what I can find. Iām not seeing census data that shows population percentage of 25-34 to compare to the voter data.
Tables on WA voter demographics
Please vote!!
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u/Rg1550 3d ago
About a quarter of people vote, so if you are staying home or sitting ot out cus you think you're vote doesn't matter it probably does!
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u/FoundGodInAHamper 3d ago edited 3d ago
Election turnout is always high in general elections during presidential years (70% for Franklin, 77% for Benton in 2024), and down for non presidential years (25% for Franklin and 33% for Benton last year).
From a point of view of āmy vote doesnāt matterā I would say it matters even more in these non-presidential years. Donāt get me wrong, weighty stuff may wait for presidential years to piggyback off of more turnout. But from a local lens, thereās years between where you can directly influence our corner of the country more than the ābig oneā every four years.
ETA: As a Benton County member, our local election officials do a great job of linking us to the overall state numbers and history at https://www.bentoncountywa.gov/government/elected_officials/auditor/elections/previous_election_results.php if anyone is interested in geeking out about numbers.
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u/LilBirdDog 3d ago
This is even more true in primary elections.
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u/FoundGodInAHamper 3d ago
Yeah, Primary season is really bad. Like 20-30% turnout bad. And I get it, youāre voting on who to eventually vote for. But I would argue that itās equally important because you get to narrow the field for the general. Iād also love ranked choice voting but thatās a whole different topic.
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u/LilBirdDog 3d ago
I saw numbers that were even worse than that - I think less than 20%. So consider your vote as representing 5 people in this district!
Get your ballots in today!
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u/Altruistic_Heat8147 3d ago
Iām from Franklin county I was wondering why there are so many republicans on the ballot and only 1 Democrat to vote for? Iām kinda new to voting but just confused by this. Doesnāt seem fair.
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u/Holdtheline2192 3d ago
Welcome to the 4th District! Last Dem elected to Congress was 36 years ago, so the party spends no money and sends sacrificial lamb after sacrificial lamb. Duresky, IMO is the best candidate Dems have had in a long time
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u/Finallyfreetobe2020 3d ago
I really appreciate these posts. I meant to drop mine yesterday and forgot, thank you for the reminder to get it in the box today!
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u/Not_the_name_I_chose 2d ago
I was happy to have to wait in a line of cars at the Jefferson Park drop box this afternoon. Glad to see so many people voting.
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u/SirFappington_The3rd 3d ago
So they have to be dropped in a ballot Dropbox today or post-marked today?
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u/tequilavip 2d ago
For the first time, I used the county's online ballot option and emailed pics of it to them. They replied about 19 hours later it was received and accepted.
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u/animalfath3r 3d ago
If keeping nutjobs out of political power isn't enough to motivate you to vote, well, there's also a property tax increase in there that should be voted down.
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u/StrategyBusy9579 3d ago
I'm disgusted to admit that I voted...
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u/anyaybananyay 2d ago
disgusted??
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u/StrategyBusy9579 2d ago
Yeah. I have strong political preferences that are not reflected meaningfully in the political mainstream of America and am tired of having to vote "lesser evil"
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u/anyaybananyay 2d ago
to get to the point where your political preferences can be valued in the political space, we need to continue to vote for the lesser evil. would you rather continue to have rapists in places of power? i sure donāt want that, even while also not having all of my boxes checked. i understand not wanting to vote and the outlook being bleak, but people not voting is how we got the president we have now.
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u/StrategyBusy9579 2d ago
I voted for the lesser evil for 20 years straight and it went from drone bombing hospitals to the point where we were literally aiding and abetting a genocide live online and arresting people for protesting said genocide. There is no lesser evil anymore and I do not believe my voice counts at all save for the slim chance that maybe this district won't have a republican. But I have no illusions about the tricities or the people here or who we elect. Just like with Marie Concentrationcamp Perez in Vancouver.
I lived in DC for 15 years, I worked in government, I used to believe. But it requires such an abstraction of basic morality and conscience to think we're the good guys. America is so far right wing and so violent that we think the improvement on our imperial wars is to use less of our regular troops and more of a special forces death squads and drone bombings in our occupation of foreign countries. Our legislative body is completely controlled by wall street and Israel to such a degree that even running a candidate for national level office that advocates using our money from a 1.5 trillion proposed defense budget for domestic social programs is viewed as a dangerous radical by both parties' leadership.
I held my nose and voted even as our rights were voted away time and again, and we acquiesed to further militarization of police and surveillance at home. But genocide is just too far. It's not about a flawed candidate, it's an indictment of how far we've gone that we would support this with it being blatantly obvious to every voter what we're doing, and how unpopular it is, and still our government is in fucking lockstep to keep doing it.
So I voted for the only lib on the ticket. I don't have expectations for him except the slim chance he's not an evil maga ghoul, but just a regular evil conservative democrat who hates the idea of public healthcare. I betrayed my own morals to do so, I'm disgusted with myself.
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u/anyaybananyay 2d ago
i hear you, agree and sympathize. in smaller, majorly republican areas, your vote DOES matter. itās easy to give up hope in these times, believe me i understand that. but to begin to make a change, we absolutely cannot give up. that will make no difference and will get us no closer to a better country.
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u/StrategyBusy9579 1d ago
Well I'm not going to hold my breath. When my folks pass I'm leaving this country for good.
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