New summer, same old story: 2025 Washington Top Two voter turnout still under 20% with one day left to vote

Fewer than one in five voters in Washington State have returned a ballot in the state’s August 2025 Top Two election, the Secretary of State’s most recent ballot return statistics show. As of this evening, with 24 hours left to vote, only 777,962 ballots have been returned to county auditors, of which 754,784 have been accepted and 6,092 have been challenged. More than three and a half million ballots remain unreturned.

Statewide turnout presently stands at 17.55%, which is comparable to the day-out number from four years ago, the last similar cycle. Final turnout in the August 2021 Top Two election ended up being 29.72%, and we could see a similar percentage this year.

If we hit thirty percent but don’t go higher, that’ll mean that seventy percent of voters declined to participate in this election despite being mailed ballots.

That’s just not healthy for democracy.

https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2025/08/new-summer-same-old-story-2025-washington-top-two-voter-turnout-still-under-20-with-one-day-left-to-vote.html