— from Milene Henley, Auditor —
This year’s primary is long and confusing, with many candidates for several of the state-wide elections. For that reason, the San Juan County Elections Office has received an unusually large number of calls about the availability of a Voters’ Pamphlet for the election. Election information is available online as an “Online Voters’ Guide.” The guide is available for viewing in three different formats.
The most generic guide is available from the County Elections page (sanjuanco.com/elections – click on “Online Voters’ Guide”). This has all federal, state and local candidate information, as well as information about measures. Click on the pluses to open up more information at each page.
For a more personalized online guide, and one which is a little easier to read, go to “My Vote” at myvote.wa.gov. You’ll need to log in with your first name, last name and date of birth. One of your options, once logged in, is to view the Online Voters’ Guide. Click on the category of race you’re looking for (federal, state, local), then scroll down the list on the right to select a candidate. Or scroll to the bottom of the list and select “Show all contests in plain text” to see a continuous document with all candidates for that group of races.
Alternatively, elections staff has extracted all of the measure and candidate information and put it into a single pdf document. That document is available on the County’s Elections website. Under “Voters’ Guide,” click on “Voters’ Guide PDF”. This is a single long document, which may be viewed online or printed, at your convenience.
In most primary elections, there are only one or two candidates on the ballot. In such a case, a printed voters’ pamphlet makes little sense. For the 2016 primary, however, a printed guide would have made a lot of sense, and we apologize for not anticipating the need. San Juan County has always partnered with the State on a printed voters’ pamphlet for the November general election, and will continue to do so.
Please call Auditor Milene Henley at (360) 370-7558 or Elections staff at (360) 378-3357 if you need assistance finding voter pamphlet information.
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Two candidates running on SJI have decided not to post signs for the primary, Frank Penwell and Sheryl Albritton. I believe all candidates have websites though.