With 61,027 votes counted, it appears we’re done with ballot tallying this election cycle. The total ballots received by the Whatcom County Auditor’s Office so far is 61,582, but not all are counted due to some being declared invalid for whatever reason.
The office must accept any valid ballot with a proper postmark up until certification day on Nov. 24, so some people who didn’t pass the signature match are still able to go into the office and update their signature.
All told, the county had about 53.9 percent turnout, just 1.1 percent below Auditor Shirley Forslof’s initial prediction of 55 percent, but within her second, downgraded prediction. We’re in the top 20 of turnout, though taking out the very small counties (for instance, Columbia County has more than 71 turnout but they have about 2,500 registered voters, while Whatcom County has 114,292) we’re basically number one in terms of how many registered voters we have to how many voted. Average voter turnout in the state, so far, is 48.9 percent, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. Check out all county tallying, over here.
