Ballots for Thurston County’s General Election are coming in at a steady pace, according to County Elections Manager Steve Homan.

“We’ve been averaging about 5 percent return each day since the ballots went out,” Homan said.  “That’s just about on our projections.”

Thurston County mailed out 148,587 ballots.  Homan expects somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of them will be returned.    Statewide election officials are predicting about 65 percent of the ballots will be returned.

As of Wednesday, some 43,062 ballots have been received at the county’s election headquarters.   At a 70 percent anticipation rate that means that about 41 percent of the ballots have been returned.

Ballots were mailed out on October 13.  Most people received their ballots on October 14 or 15.   The first day the county received returned ballots were on October 18 & 19 when about 11 percent of the estimated 70 percent were in.   The ballots continued to come into the election office at about 5 percent a day.  The lowest was on October 21 when only 3 percent were returned while the greatest was on October 26 when 9 percent were returned.

“We expect the 5  percentage rate to continue until the weekend,” Homan said.  “We really expect to get in about 50 percent of the ballots on Tuesday, November 2 and Wednesday November 3.”   Ballots have to be postmarked by November 2 and ballots will continue to arrive for several days after the election.

Political experts have been trying to determine just how “Vote By Mail” affects turnout.  When do voters mail back their ballots? Many have estimated that 30 percent of the ballots are turned in the first few days, 30 percent the last two days and the rest in-between.   From the current Thurston County count, that doesn’t appear to be the case.   Just when ballots are marked and mailed back affects how political advertising dollars are spent.

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