Our Organization

In recent years, King County Elections has benefited from a great deal of focus, oversight and dedicated resources.  The result has been progressive change and improvement in the administration of elections.  The elections division’s budget for the 2008 fiscal year is approximately $20 million.

King County Elections is staffed by dedicated, hard working individuals with a strong sense of pride and commitment to the work they do.  Working in collaboration with the Executive and Council, Elections has continually worked to establish open and transparent processes along with streamlined and enhanced work procedures. In November 2007, the Metropolitan King County Council passed an ordinance establishing King County Elections as a separate division within the Department of Executive Services, allowing the division to focus on conducting accurate elections and registering voters.

To comply with Section 203 of the federal Voting Rights Act, King County produces all election materials in both English and Chinese.  In addition to providing translated materials, King County employs a full-time Chinese translation staff as well as bilingual poll workers.  This federal law requires counties to provide language assistance to voters if more than 5 percent of voting age citizens in a jurisdiction are members of a single-language minority group who do not “speak or understand English adequately enough to participate in the electoral process.”

2008 promises to be a landmark year for King County Elections with the move to a consolidated facility, the presidential election and the phased-in transition to countywide vote by mail as a result of three years of research and work efforts. 

King County is a well respected leader within the elections community for its programs, including outreach and education, accessible voting advocacy, and technology innovations.

In 2005, King County Elections became the first in the state to offer an online voter guide that allows voters to verify their registration, find their polling place and get information on candidate races and measures customized to their address from the convenience of their computer. 

In 2006, King County launched the largest and most comprehensive outreach and education campaign in Washington about the roll-out of new accessible voting equipment, using bus ads and videos to publicize the campaign.  Reaching out to the community, King County spearheaded a Disability Advisory Committee to generate feedback and response from the disability community about the new voting equipment.  Input from a community advisory committee is now Washington State law and a requirement of every county.

In August 2006, the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks awarded King County Elections the “Best Practice Award” for mail ballot processing.  King County Elections was chosen for its significant efforts to improve ballot count accuracy and implement nationally recognized quality control standards.  The Mail Ballot Processing Unit began working toward Six Sigma goals in 2005 to benchmark against any discrepancies between the number of mail ballots received and the number of mail ballots tabulated.  

King County was the first county in Washington to allow election candidates to file for office online.  Since its implementation in 2006, online candidate filing has gained popularity, and nearly 90 percent of candidates are expected to file online in 2008.

Updated: 02/21/2008
修訂日期: 02/21/2008

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