‘Incredibly busy.’ Thurston County voting centers see record turnout on election day
More than 3,000 people registered to vote in Thurston County between Nov. 1 and Nov. 5, and most of them went to the county’s voting centers, Auditor Mary Hall says.
Voters lined up at two voting centers for the Presidential election: the county’s primary center at 2915 29th Ave. SE in the Tumwater Mottman neighborhood and a temporary center at Lacey Timberland Library at 500 College St. SE.
Both centers were “incredibly busy” throughout election day, Hall said. The county processed 559 new registrations at the Lacey center and 338 new registrations at the Tumwater center on Tuesday, she said. Additionally, she said 494 people went to the Tumwater center Tuesday to update their voter information and 345 went to the Lacey center to do the same.
“We had everything under control,” Hall said. “We had police presence at both locations and voters were very complimentary and patient.”
A record 3,089 people registered to vote on Nov. 1, 2, 4 and 5, Hall said. That total includes registrations processed at the two voting centers, a HUB at The Evergreen State College and at the other Timberland Libraries across the county.
But about two-thirds of those registrations were processed at the two voting centers, she said. These numbers were not unexpected, she added.
“The county is growing and that of course has a lot to do with it,” Hall said. “We had a lot of new people that had just moved to the state within the last six months or a year, and there are some people who really only think about elections every four years.”
The population of Thurston County grew from about 294,793 in 2020 to 307,000 in 2024, according to the Washington state Office of Financial Management.
In 2020, the last presidential election year, 83.8% of the county’s then 201,865 registered voters participated, according to final certified results.
This year, there were 207,924 registered voters. Turnout reached 70.1% by Saturday afternoon, Nov. 9, but there were still about 15,000 ballots left to be counted, according to the latest tallies.
Ballots only needed to be dropped off or postmarked by Nov. 5. Hall said she hoped the final turnout would be around 80% after all the remaining ballots arrive and are counted.
Notably, Hall said many people at the voting centers described themselves as first-time voters. The county did not officially tally first-time voters so Hall did not have numbers to share, but she did offer one anecdote.
“I do know of one woman who was in her 80s who had never registered to vote before because her husband didn’t think that women should vote,” Hall said. “Her husband had passed away, so she came in, registered and voted.”
The Lacey voting center appeared especially busy on election day. Hall said that voting center had just two open stations to help people, whereas the Tumwater voting center had seven open stations.
The wait time at the Lacey center peaked at about 3 hours and 25 minutes on election day, Hall said. Meanwhile, she said visitors to the Tumwater center waited between 90 minutes and two hours at the busiest time, which she estimated was around dinner time.
Lines stretched out of the voting centers well past 8 p.m. Tuesday when the polls officially closed. Hall said the Lacey center finished serving people at about 11 p.m. while the Tumwater center wrapped up at about 9:30 p.m. that night.
“I think staff did a phenomenal job and I’m grateful for all the political party observers that came out and observed the process,” Hall said. “That’s very important to our democratic process.
“I can’t thank our temporary extra help staff enough for the great work that they did,” Hall said. “And of course, I honestly believe I have the best election staff in the country.”
Hall said there were no security concerns or even phone calls from upset voters this time around. She said Sheriff’s Office deputies and local police kept eyes on voting centers, libraries and ballot boxes.
“I really want to thank local law enforcement who were standing ready in the event anything was to happen,” Hall said.
The Auditor’s Office Election Division conducted a clean random audit of the Nov. 5 general election to confirm their tabulation system accurately counted ballots, according to a Friday news release.
The audit looked at the votes for state governor in precincts 204, 347 and 701. The precincts and race were mutually selected by the county Democratic and Republican parties for the audit, the release says.
Two separate audit boards hand-counted ballots for the audit and compared their results, the release says.
The results of the hand-counts reportedly matched the machine tabulated count, meaning there were no discrepancies.
