Drafter
Clerk 06/20/2006
Title
AN ORDINANCE authorizing the conduct of vote-by-mail elections and directing the director of the records, elections and licensing services division to conduct all primary, special and general elections in King County entirely by mail ballot beginning on a date in 2007 or in 2008 to be determined by the director only after certain conditions are met.
Body
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE COUNCIL OF KING COUNTY:
SECTION 1. Findings:
A. The number of King County voters who vote by absentee ballot currently fluctuates between approximately seventy and eighty percent in any given election.
B. In the 2005 primary, 81.73 percent of the ballots cast in King County were cast by mail.
C. Nearly sixty percent of all registered voters in King County are currently registered to automatically vote by absentee ballot.
D. The current dual system of conducting elections by mail and polls in King County requires five hundred twenty-eight polling locations and close to four thousand poll workers for a countywide election, plus a full scale mail ballot processing operation and facility.
E. In 2005, the Washington state Legislature amended Title 29A RCW to allow counties the option of conducting all elections by mail.
F. As of April 2006, thirty-four of the thirty-nine counties in Washington state have adopted legislation to authorize all mail voting.
G. Conducting all elections in King County by mail will allow the county to focus resources and systems to gain efficiencies and increase security by limiting dependency on human interaction and ballot handling.
SECTION 2. The director of the records, elections and licensing services division
is directed to conduct all King County elections entirely by mail ballot in accordance with state law beginning on a date in 2007 or in 2008 determined by the director only after the following conditions have been met:
A. A new director of records, elections and licensing services and a ...

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