SEQUIM, Wash.—“No Kings” demonstrators poured out for mass marches and vigils in Washington State on October 17, urging voters to fill out their ballots immediately and put them in ballot drop boxes. The aim of this “Get-Out-The-Vote” effort is to end Trump-MAGA majority control of the U.S. House and Senate. The marchers here also urged voters to “Vote NO” on I-645, a ballot initiative to repeal the state’s “Millionaires’ Tax.”
Nationwide, media observers estimated turnout for the October 17 rallies, vigils and marches was in the millions. An estimated 70,000 protesters marched from the West Lake Park to the Seattle Center International Fountain, many holding signs urging “Vote NO” on I-645.
Hedge fund millionaire Brian Heywood hired signature gatherers who collected enough signatures to put I-645 on the ballot to repeal the Millionaires’ Tax approved by the Washington State legislature earlier this year. It will impose a 9.9% tax on all income above $1,000,000. In the Voters’ Pamphlet mailed out to every registered voter, Janie White, President of the Washington Education Association, charged, “Washington has one of the most upside-down tax systems where working and middle-class families pay a far higher tax rate than the wealthiest.” Repeal of the Millionaires’ Tax, she warned, “would make that worse. I-645 is fiscally irresponsible, slashing billions in funding for education and healthcare, increasing taxes on 460,000 hard-working families, and jeopardizing tax cuts for thousands of small businesses.”
Other signers of this appeal were Matt Hipp, a small-business owner, Rosa Potts, a registered nurse, April Sims, President of the Washington State Labor Council, Thom Garrard, a retired classroom teacher from Edmonds, Washington, as well as a member of the Edmonds School Board, and Lindsay Johnson, leader of Planned Parenthood in Yakima, Washington.
More than 2,000 “No Kings” protesters stood along Washington Avenue on Sequim’s west side, holding signs defending democracy. Among them were signs that proclaimed “Tax the Millionaires!” VOTE ‘NO’ I-645” and another that read, “I Pay More Taxes Than Boeing! Tax the Millionaires! Fund Schools, Healthcare, Food.”
The focus everywhere was to “Get-Out-The-Vote.” Voters received their ballots by mail on October 14, and millions filled them out and put them in a drop box to be counted in the November 3 mid-term elections. Over five million people vote in Washington State—one of eight states and the District of Columbia that vote by mail. But the mass movements here urged voters to put ballots in a ballot drop box rather than in a mailbox. Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell convened a news conference in Seattle to denounce the 20,267 mail ballots rejected in the August 4 primary, compared with only 16,131 rejected in the 2024 primary election, ostensibly because of late postmarks.
It is a whopping 32% increase in the number of rejected ballots, enough to tip close elections. In Clallam County, the ballots rejected due to late postmarks between 2024 and 2026 increased by 199%. It doubled.
Said Hobbs, “Over the last couple of weeks, the U.S. Postal Service is trying to do everything they can to ruin vote-by-mail in Washington State.” Sen. Cantwell accused the Trump Administration of “disenfranchising voters across the United States with policies that leave them with a ballot that has been cast but never counted.”
The U.S. Supreme Court threw out Trump’s attempt to wreck mail balloting—yet the drive to strip people of the right to vote by mail continues unabated. Said Senator Cantwell, “I don’t have the time to depend on the Supreme Court. I have to depend on Washington voters to get out and vote and do it in the most prudent fashion so we can have our voices heard in an election.”
The U.S. Postal Service cites a change in its procedure as one reason for the higher rate of rejected ballots. Mail dropped in mailboxes more than fifty miles from a postal distribution center was picked up in the late afternoon or evening and delivered at night to the postal distribution centers, postmarked before midnight, so it was counted as valid. But now, they are not picked up until the next morning. That means that ballots dropped in the mailbox in the afternoon or evening of election day would not be postmarked until the day after the election—too late to be counted.
The 50-mile rule is also a brazen attack on rural voters since the postal centers where mail is sorted are located in large cities like Tacoma and Spokane. And it was noted that the rate of rejected ballots is far higher for communities with large numbers of Latino voters—a racist impact. The highest rate of ballot drop box use in Washington State is in Clallam County, where 77% of ballots are deposited in ballot drop boxes compared to 70% statewide. The reason is simple: all mail picked up in Clallam County is trucked down to Tacoma, a two- or three-hour trip one way. From remote Neah Bay in the West End of Clallam County, it is a four-hour trip. The ballots are postmarked in Tacoma, then shipped back to the Courthouse in Port Angeles to be counted.
At an “Election Protection” committee meeting here in Sequim, Bonnie Boenish, a leader of the League of Women Voters, told the crowd that if anyone wants to mail their ballot, they should take it, in person, to a local post office and have it stamped with the postmark before it is dropped in the mail. That way, it will be postmarked on or before Election Day. Another person at the meeting pointed out that a voter in Clallam County mailed her ballot a day early. She tracked her ballot online and discovered that it took them over 24 hours to deliver her ballot to Tacoma and stamp it with a postmark. Even though she voted a day early, her ballot was rejected. This is called “stealing votes!”
Ballot drop boxes are not free of Trump’s vote-suppression trickery. He has ordered ICE to set up surveillance at ballot drop boxes to stop and interrogate people about their qualifications to vote. He claims the aim is to ferret out “illegals” who are casting fake votes—a virtually nonexistent felony.
Voters here have not forgotten that two years ago, a neo-Nazi terrorist threw a bomb into a ballot drop box in Vancouver, Washington, which exploded, severely damaging or destroying about 500 ballots. At the “Election Protection” committee meeting, the 62 people present were organizing to protect voters from intimidation or outright terror by these masked, armed ICE agents or by neo-Nazi ballot-box bombers.
“Remember, ICE cannot be nearer than 25 feet from the drop box,” a woman told the crowd. “And they must identify themselves before they accost anyone trying to drop their ballot in the box. If there is any trouble, call this number,” she said.
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