A slow, lonely day for election workers

Even with this year's primary election moved up to a time of year when many people are on vacation, some officials predicted that a continued push for all-mail voting would boost voter turnout.

But it appeared that the counties with the highest voter turnout Tuesday were simply the ones with hotly contested races.

In Snohomish County, where voters went to an all-mail voting system last year, Auditor Carolyn Diepenbrock had predicted participation would jump to 38 percent over 2005's 27 percent. But late Tuesday afternoon, it looked like participation would be around 30 percent, Diepenbrock said.

"I don't have a sense of whether it has to do with moving the primary to August; we just don't have a lot of participation," she said. "A lot of the people still don't like the way the primary is: the pick-a-party primary."

King County officials said it was too early to predict turnout since many ballots are still collected at polls.

King, Kittitas and Pierce are the only counties in the state that haven't made the switch to all-mail voting. King County plans to make the switch next spring.

As polls opened, Michael Froebe, a seven-year veteran poll worker, said it looked like this election may be the slowest he's seen. At 11:30 a.m., only 37 ballots had been cast at the Northminster Presbyterian Church in Seattle's Loyal Heights neighborhood.

"This is dismal," said the Boeing engineer. "This is a very low turnout."

Even though polls opened at 7 a.m., no one showed up to vote at Des Moines Elementary School until 9 a.m. Eight hours later, 44 people had cast ballots there.

Inspector Diane Bingham said that's not unusual for a primary with only local races. On Tuesday, four voters at once constituted a crowd.

Late in the afternoon, two people walked in. "Uh-oh, we've got a rush," poll worker Mike Poynter joked.

King County election workers couldn't predict the percentage of voters who cast ballots at polling places, but in the 2005 King County primary more than 80 percent of ballots were cast by mail. The turnout that year was about 30 percent.

Secretary of State Sam Reed said it seemed that polls statewide were empty Tuesday as voters chose to vote by mail instead.

"My impression is that the turnout at polling sites is very sparse. I think the election board workers are very lonely people," he said. "Most of the people voting this election would be voting through the mail."

Reed predicted a slight increase in turnout statewide compared to the 2005 primary: 34 percent of registered voters, compared to 32 percent.

He cited mail voting and heated races in Eastern Washington as the reason for the increase. The change from a September primary to an August primary shouldn't have an effect; it's mostly just for overseas voters and elections officials, he said.

Brian Alexander: 206-464-2026 or balexander@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times staff reporters Christina Siderius and Cara Solomon contributed to this report.