Media outlets have declared Referendum 71 approved by voters, describing it as the country’s first voter-ratified gay-rights measure.   As of Friday afternoon, the measure had an approval margin of nearly 71,000, or about 5 percentage points — 754,180 to 683,320.  King County, which accounts for nearly a third of the electorate, was giving the measure an approval margin of over 150,000. King’s approval rate has been running 68 percent, and a number of the ballots remaining to be counted are from that county.

The referendum, placed on the ballot by foes of expanded rights for state-registered domestic partners, has been on hold since it was passed by the Legislature earlier this year. If the vote holds, Senate Bill 5688 will go into effect Dec. 3.  The election returns will be certified by Secretary of State Sam Reed and Gov.  Chris Gregoire, probably on Dec. 1, but under provisions of the Constitution, a bill referred to voters and approved takes effect 30 days after Election Day, or Dec. 3 in this case.

Barbara Madsen, a highly regarded senior member of the Washington Supreme Court, has been chosen by her peers as Chief Justice, succeeding Gerry Alexander in January.

Madsen, the third woman ever elected to the state’s highest court, has been a justice for 16 years. She was first elected in 1992 and has been re-elected to six-year terms ever since.  She becomes only the second woman to serve as chief justice. (The other was also a Barbara – Durham.)  Madsen, a Renton native, is a U-Dub and  Gonzaga Law graduate, and was presiding judge of Seattle Muni Court before elected to the high court.

She’ll be sworn in as chief on Jan. 11.  She succeeds the longest-serving chief justice, Alexander, who is stepping down from the top post, but remaining as associate justice for two more years. He is required to retire at the end of 2011, the year he turns 75.  Madsen is 57.

With Seattle and Tacoma mayoral races uber-close — and other contests as well –  we’re getting the inevitable questions about the R word — recount.

Here’s the crash course:

–The basic rule is that a recount is mandatory if the margin is less than one-half of 1 percent and also less than 2,000 votes. (If you want to look up the citation, it’s RCW 29A.64.021.  If you want to wait for the movie, that’s OK, too.)

–A manual recount, as opposed to a machine recount, is required if the gap is less than a quarter of 1 percent and also less than 1,000 votes apart.

–In regional and local offices, a manual recount is conducted if the margin is less than 150 votes and a quarter of 1 percent.

–Ballot measures? Basically the same. If the margin is less than 2,000 votes and less than one-half of 1 percent of the votes cast, then recount is mandatory. The state decides whether to use a machine or hand recount. continue reading

Fresh numbers from the Washington Elections Division show the number of younger voters dropping as a percentage of the electorate – and their elders, 55 and older, growing as a bloc.

The state has nearly 3.6 million registered voters.  The closely watched youngest voters have traditionally the lowest voter turnout rate of all segments of the population – a perplexing reality that keeps election outreach workers searching for ways to connect.  The new figures show that the pool of 18-to 24-year olds eligible for this week’s election was 9 percent of the total electorate, shrinking from 10 percent last year. 

The segments between 25 and 54 were little changed.  But the older voters, 55 and older, grew as a share of the overall electorate.

Here’s the grid provided by Elections’ David Motz, our registration whiz:

Source: WA Voter Registration Database

After this year’s election is certified next month, we’ll be able to find out the turnout by age bracket. Last year, 18-24-year olds had a 68 percent turnout and each age segment had a progressively better rate, including an amazing 91 percent participation by folks 55 and older!

After an “Election Day” that spanned nearly three weeks, the process of tallying the final vote will take still more time. As of this morning, ballots of 28.5 percent of the state’s 3.58 million registered voters have been counted.  That’s over a million ballots.  Tons more are being processed as we speak, and many more are still “in the mail,” since state law only requires that ballots be postmarked by Nov. 3.

How many people will have voted by the time counties certify their returns in about three weeks? Good question. The old rule of thumb is that you take the election night total and double it. That would make it about a 57 percent turnout — considerably higher than the 51 percent predicted earlier by the Secretary of State.  State Elections Director Nick Handy does offer the caveat that the old rule of thumb may need to be revised, because populous King County has switched to vote by mail and has speedy new tabulation equipment. King posted over 254,000 votes last evening — possibly half of the ultimate total – whereas the county typically takes days to catch up with the rest of the state.  King, of course, accounts for nearly a third of the state voters. The county plans to update numbers every afternoon at 4:30 p.m. continue reading

‘Tis the season to give … and get some good ideas about how to serve your community.

Secretary Reed had a great time volunteering recently at the local Goodwill in Kitsap County with high school students from the Washington Youth Academy, who spent time hunting through donations and sorting clothing.

How can you help your community? I can think of one timely thing: Vote. Ballots must be postmarked or dropped off at a county drop-box today!

Way to go First Creek Middle School in Tacoma!

Students at this school will be recognized by Secretary Reed at their Veterans’ Day assembly on Nov. 10 for the most student ballots cast of any school participating in our Mock Election. 

In all, the First Creek students cast 544 ballots. Nice!

More than 5,300 students grades K-12 participated in the Mock Election, a non-partisan educational exercise that promotes civic awareness in classrooms. Students from schools throughout the state voted online last week on various issues.

Students grades 6 – 12 weighed in on statewide measures I-1033 and R-71 – and the results were very interesting!

Washington’s hot ballot measure dealing with domestic partnerships, Referendum 71, is getting national media attention, along with Maine, which is voting on actual gay marriage.  But in Washington, the debate is sometimes eclipsed by a legal and public relations war over whether the R-71 petitions should be released as a public record, or kept confidential.

The New York Times’ William Yardley visited this disclosure battle in a Sunday newspaper piece ,calling the dispute a collision of “privacy, free speech and elections in the Internet age.”  By permission, the photo was from your own From Our Corner blog.

Secretary of State Sam Reed has followed a legal strategy of releasing initiative and referendum petitions under the mandate of the voter-approved Public Records Act, which has no exemption for the petition sheets.  Further, he views  petition-signing as a public act of citizen-legislating, where transparency is required, not a private act like voting.  The state, however, is under both federal and state court order to keep the petitions under wraps while litigation is under way, brought by initiative activist Tim Eyman and foes of same-sex marriage. continue reading

OK, it’s like asking you eat your vegetables (and not just that Halloween candy!), but From Our Corner adds this Election Eve plea – please vote.

As of Monday morning, the returns were described as light in King, Snohomish, Clark, Yakima, Spokane, Pierce and other populous counties, and moderate-to-wimpy in other locales.

It literally couldn’t get much easier to vote.  Except for a relative handful of polling places in Pierce County, we’re all voting by mail.  Your ballot literally came to your mailbox several weeks ago and it takes very little time and energy to mark the ballot and get it outbound today or tomorrow.  Sooner is better. If you’re using snail mail, make sure your ballot will be postmarked by Tuesday.  Some home pickups (like, uh,  in Olympia) are actually sent to a nearby town for postmark. And beware evil mailboxes if the last Tuesday pickup has come and gone when you arrive.

Better is to use an official county drop-box or county elections office before 8 p.m. tomorrow evening.  Sites can be located via the handy-dandy MyVote (click on icon). continue reading

As Washingtonians wrap up their balloting on expansion of domestic partnerships, south of the border in Oregon, advocates of same-sex marriage are launching a multi-year effort to overturn a state constitutional ban on gay marriage.

The Oregonian newspaper’s coverage is here  and political blogger Jeff Mapes’ post is here .

Washington is one of many states with a Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman.  Referendum 71 on Tuesday’s statewide ballot is a public vote on this year’s major expansion of the state’s three-year old law dealing with rights and responsibilities of state-registered domestic partners, both gay and opposite sex couples where at least one member is 62 or older.  The measure, sometimes dubbed “everything but marriage,” does not authorize civil or religious marriage or allow counties to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.