Washington Senate Race Brings Last Minute Push for Votes

A neck-and-neck race for U.S. Senate seemed to be a major factor in a last-minute get-out-the-vote effort.

U.S. Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, is being challenged by Republican Dino Rossi for a seat in a divided Senate. The Republicans are projected to take the U.S. House of Representatives this year.

At Bellevue City Hall, some who waited in line for more than two hours at the Eastside's sole in-person polling station said that they wanted to make sure that U.S. Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, would return to office. The polling station was mainly for voters with disabilities, but the county also directed registered voters who didn't receive or lost their ballots to vote there.

Voter Mori Marchany of Redmond said that she never thought of skipping the vote this year, even after seeing the 2- to 2-and-a-half hour wait at the polling station at Bellevue City Hall.

"Things are getting weird around this country, and I wanted to make sure Murray stays in and Rossi doesn't get in," she said.

After 8 p.m., with Murray having less than a percentage lead, supporters of Rossi at a Republican Party rally were manning phone banks to encourage people to get their ballots to the sole post office still stamping mail until midnight.

The state requires that mailed ballots have an Election Day postmark, but the law allows the postmark to be made after 8 p.m., state attorney general Rob McKenna reminded the crowd.

"We have volunteers who will pick up the ballots and drive them down to SeaTac Airport," the site of the only place in the county with an open U.S. Post Office, he said.

King County could get up to 700,000 ballots out of 1.1 million registered voters this year, said county elections quality assurance manager Anthony Harris.

"We've received 500,000 so far, and we could get 100,000 both today and tomorrow," he said Tuesday night, while helping manage the line at Bellevue City Hall. Ballots coming in Wednesday would be mailed ballots that received a postmark in time.

King County eliminated most polling places after going to an all-mail ballot last year. This is the first year that the county has held an all-mail ballot for a general election.

Last year, when there was no general election, fewer than 70 people used the Bellevue City Hall polling station, according to the King County elections division.