Mail-in ballots? Forget it. Optically scanned, computerized ballot counting? You might as well be talking science fiction.
Commonplace features of modern-day elections are otherworldly for conservation districts.
These often yawn-inspiring political entities spend millions in public money to protect natural resources on private and public lands but stand largely outside the public eye.
Every year between January and March is election time for Washington 47 conservation districts, which operate outside the jurisdiction of county election departments and under their own state laws.
Throughout the state, the five-person boards consist of three members elected on a rotating basis for three-year terms and two members appointed by the state Conservation Commission.
They approve funding for natural resource conservation projects for private landowners and the general public, from monitoring incursion of animal waste into waterways to restoring salmon habitat.
They don’t make or enforce regulations and can levy land assessments with approval from county commissioners, but most don’t — including, for now, those in Clallam and Jefferson counties.
But most voters don’t seem to care one way or the other.
Low-key elections
In low-key, low-budget elections in March on the North Olympic Peninsula, voters were informed of the elections by public notices in local media.
They trickled into the single polling places open in Clallam County for four hours at the Port of Port Angeles headquarters in Port Angeles.
In Jefferson County, they voted at Shold Business Park for two hours, the minimum voting period required under law.
Registered voters checked off their choices or wrote down their picks, then deposited them the old-fashioned way — in ballot boxes.
Conservation district employees who ran the elections tabulated results certified by the state Conservation Commission, which oversees district operations.
Turnout: .0005 percent
This year, only 1,625 of about 3.5 million registered voters in Washington took part in those elections, according to figures released last week by the commission.
That’s .0005 percent of eligible voters statewide — a turnout that isn’t unusual, Conservation Commission Executive Director Mark Clark said.
But a turnout like that bodes ill for representative government, a key state elections official says.
When minuscule percentages of voters cast ballots for people who decide how to spend public money, “it undercuts the idea of a democracy,” state Director of Elections Nick Handy said.
“That means you have a very small group of people carrying a disproportionate level of influence in those districts. We want as high a participation as we can get in participatory government,” Handy said.
You’d think the public would be more involved in conservation district elections, especially on the North Olympic Peninsula, Clark said.
It’s a place where general election voter turnout is ho-hum at 60 percent.
“It makes you scratch your head,” Clark said.
