Where the voters are not

Each political district should have just about the same amount of people in it, so that each elected official is representing the same number of citizens. But how many voters do they represent? That's a different matter.

That new fount of elections information, Secretary of State spokesman Dave Ammons, sent out some interesting figures on registered voters today.

Notably, while your average legislative district includes 69,542 voters, Sen. Rosa Franklin's District 29 includes just 46,101. Also representing the relatively few interested parties in that district are Reps. Steve Conway and Steve Kirby.

Who has the most voters to appease? Sen. Cheryl Pflug and Reps. Glenn Anderson and Jay Rodne, of District 5. That’s eastern King County, with 90,876 ballot-casters.

What explains these disparities? Not sure. Could be demographics like age, race and income. Or migration in or out of the district since it was last drawn. Or perhaps competitiveness. Every time there’s a tight race in an area, there’s a focus on registering new voters.

Low-registering District 29 is in the middle of Tacoma, for instance, where the incumbents are all seasoned. Franklin has served in the Senate since 1993, and Conway is in his eighth term. At the Congressional level, it's the land of Rep. Norm Dicks, first elected in – wait for it – 1976.