According to ex-mayor Greg Nickels, Seattle’s mayoral election could be decided by 65 votes
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell went to bed Thursday night with a comfortable lead. By Friday afternoon, that all changed. Katie Wilson has surged to within 4,300 votes. That’s less than two percentage points, with 50,000 ballots remaining to be counted.
On Facebook, former Mayor Greg Nickels did the math. If Wilson maintains her Friday percentage with the remaining ballots, she wins this race by 65 votes. Sixty-five. Out of more than 200,000 cast.
This is democracy at its messiest. Ballots trickling in. Numbers shifting. Leads evaporating. One batch of ballots from Capitol Hill, and suddenly everything changes. Another from Madison Park, and it swings back. Some people hate this. They want elections to be decided on election night, just like the old days. Clean. Simple. Done.
In close races, small steps matter. Signature cures, late-arriving mail from outlying zip codes, and provisional ballots can tip the outcome. That is not chaos. It is the machinery of elections doing its job, in public, with numbers you can watch in real time.
Every legal ballot gets counted. Every voice gets heard. Even if it takes weeks. Don’t like it? Pressure your lawmakers to change the system. Right now, this is the one we have, and it’s our democracy working exactly as designed.
Think about those 65 potential votes separating these candidates. That’s a single apartment building in Fremont. That’s one coffee shop’s worth of customers. In a city of 750,000, that’s 0.009% of the population.
Now think about everyone you know who didn’t vote. The colleague who forgot. The neighbor who said it didn’t matter. The friend who meant to, but never quite got around to it. Any one of them could be the difference between Bruce Harrell serving four more years or Katie Wilson becoming Seattle’s first democratic socialist mayor.
This isn’t some abstract civics lesson. This is real. The person running your city for the next four years might be decided by fewer people than it takes to fill a Metro bus.
You want different results? Show up. You think the city’s heading in the wrong direction? Vote. You believe your voice doesn’t matter? Look at this race.
Democracy isn’t just messy. It’s inconvenient. It requires you to research candidates, fill out a ballot, and actually mail the thing. In Washington, we’ve made it as easy as possible. The ballot comes to you. No stamp required. You can vote in your pajamas.
Yet people still skip it, then wonder why nothing changes. Or why everything changes in ways they don’t like.
Today’s ballot count could flip this race again. Or seal it. Either way, remember this moment the next time someone says voting doesn’t matter. Remember Bruce Harrell and Katie Wilson, separated by what might be a 65-vote margin.
Your vote always counts. Sometimes it counts more than you could possibly imagine.
That’s the commentary for Nov. 10. Text us at (888) 973-5476 or leave a comment at MyNorthwest.
Charlie Harger is the host of on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries . Follow Charlie and email him .
Follow @https://twitter.com/kirocharlie
