I’m going to say something that will sound odd: Voters turned out in record numbers for Tacoma’s mayoral election this year. But when you look at the big picture, that’s a pretty sad number.
For city-wide races, more than 37% of registered voters cast ballots in the 2025 general election. That number is low — very low — compared to the city’s turnout in the general elections of 2024 and 2022. Those hit 75% and 58% respectively. There were no city-wide races or ballot measures in 2020, but Pierce County’s overall voter turnout was more than 82%.
Still, this year’s election saw the highest voter turnout for a Tacoma mayor’s race in at least 10 years.
Here’s the pattern: the high turnouts are for even-year elections, which are either midterm or presidential election years. Odd numbers are for the off-years, the also-rans, and, it seems, the die-hard voters. Tacoma mayoral elections have fallen on those years for more than 60 years. The last even-year mayoral election was in 1962. It was also in the spring, not during the fall federal election.
And this might sound even more, ahem, strange: That odd-number year pattern is by design. In 1963, the Washington state legislature passed a law requiring cities of Tacoma’s size to have their elections for local offices on odd-numbered years. That’s why even-year elections will see city-wide votes over ballot measures and some offices like municipal court judge, but not mayor, city council, or most other local roles.
When the state law passed, Tacoma was transitioning from a council-appointed mayor to an elected one. Tacoma’s debut mayoral election on an odd-numbered year came at a dark moment for the city’s government. The general election of 1967 went to A.L. Slim Rasmussen, an infamous Tacoma leader who held office for a single two-year term.
Rasmussen lost re-election in 1969, but a slate of allied city council members tried to install a puppet for him as city manager, according to historical accounts. Those council members were ultimately thrown out of office by voters after they tried to block their own recall election.
So, Tacoma, things could always be worse. Still, it’s hard to feel satisfied with about a third of registered voters casting ballots in a typical mayoral race.
I applaud people who urge voters to get out there, engage with candidates, and cast their ballots whenever they have a voice in government. And it’s frustrating that more people aren’t motivated to pick their local leaders even when federal offices are absent.
But I think it’s a little too easy to blame individual voters’ apathy. Numbers don’t lie, and it’s clear voters en masse are motivated by federal elections. It would be a big lift, with a strategic investment of time and resources, to boost voter turnout in odd-year elections.
I think a coordinated effort like that could be a rewarding way to build community and civic engagement in Tacoma. (I’m aware there would also be a lot of shouting.) On the other hand, I don’t know how effective it would be.
But as hard as beating the voter turnout drum might be, it’s probably not as hard as changing state law. That’s what it would take to move elections to even-numbered years, and people have tried. A state bill introduced in Olympia in 2023 sought to give cities the freedom to choose when to have municipal elections, but it never made it out of legislative committees for a full vote.
The Northwest Progressive Institute, which supported the policy change, wrote at the time that there could be a few reasons why the 1963 state legislature favored odd-numbered years for local elections.
Maybe it was to spread contests among multiple elections, so that everything didn’t fall on the even years. Or maybe it was so that a demographic more likely to vote in off-years would have a bigger say in local politics.
Regardless of the intention, what we have now is a system that puts choices over local leaders in the hands of a much smaller group of voters. Sure, all voters could have a say in an election. But they don’t, and that’s not just in Tacoma.
When I look at that outcome, I think, isn’t that odd?
