Our Place in Walla Walla #6: Elections and Voting

These days, our place is filled with ballots.

Washington uses a mail-in voting process and so over the past week Walla Walla residents have received their ballots for numerous races. A big shout-out to the Whitman Wire which has done a fantastic job this fall covering important local elections, including campaigns for the Port of Walla Walla Commissioner, School Board and City Council. (As the Union-Bulletin noted this summer, “in Washington, odd-numbered year elections tend to emphasize local politics while being lighter on state and national races.”)

According to Walla Walla Trends, there is a steady increase in the percentage of local people eligible to vote who are in fact registered voters. This doesn’t mean that they actually vote, however. In last fall’s elections, as part of a large drop in voting in Eastern Washington compared to the 2018 election, Walla Walla registered an 8% decline in voters.

In general, Walla Walla “leans conservative” even though both the Republican and the Democratic parties have local operations. (I like to tell people that we live in a purple-ish city in a red county in a blue state, making for interesting and sometimes unexpected voting outcomes.)

No matter who you prefer, though, ballots need to be returned by Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 7. (This is not the only local election day next month, however. At CTUIR, members of the General Council turn in their ballots to select tribal leaders on Tuesday, Nov. 14.)

Yet, as much as state election officials try to simplify the process of voting, huge barriers remain, both deliberately caused and inadvertent.

Because Walla Walla is home to a large Latinx population—nearly one quarter of our county’s population according to recent census data—it’s important to understand the barriers to electoral participation faced by this set of community members and perhaps if there are ways that we can reduce the barriers to political participation.

Delia Gutierrez, MSW, was a longtime community organizer for the grassroots Commitment to Community (C2C) neighborhood initiative and has expertise on this topic (Gutierrez now works as a social worker for The Health Center). C2C works in both majority-Latino and majority non-Latino parts of the city. Delia told me that in many Latinx households “voting is not a priority because in other countries Latinos do not believe in the government and when they come to this country they do not care about politics.” Despite more opportunities to participate, they are not interested. Once they are in the US, “they are not welcomed into the political system and so some people feel neglected and ignored.” Gutierrez said that she frequently encountered those attitudes when working with families in the C2C neighborhoods who did not want to vote even though they were eligible to do so.

Expanding on this topic, long-time community organizer Mary Jimenez Lopez taught me why Latinos are disconnected from the electoral process. Lopez has mobilized Latinos in central and eastern Washington for years on many causes and said that while a lot of her work has been in Yakima, many of the issues are the same here in Walla Walla. She observed that there are many problems with the way the ballots ask for names and signatures which may be based on a different naming system than a lot of Latinx voters use and then mismatched names lead to ballots being disqualified. “People call it ‘la boleta’ (the little paper),” she said, ”but it’s not little! It’s a huge packet! It doesn’t make sense to a lot of people. ‘La boleta de votar.’ Or maybe they fill out the ballot but then they don’t sign it. Or they fill it out but don’t put their signature in the right place. That’s why, even if Latinos vote, often their vote gets thrown out.”

(Extensive background about the disconnect between the electoral system and Latino voters in our area is available here. The Walla Walla Latino Alliance has spearheaded various voter registrations initiatives over the years. A recent study found a rightward-shift in Central and Eastern Washington Latinos in the last national election, which got attention because “Latinos make up the state’s largest minority racial group, and are fast growing in Central Washington where they form majorities in multiple counties”).

Whitman College has a tradition of strong participation in local, state and national elections. Friday’s Whitman Today invited community members to engage in “candidate appearances and voter education activities, including voter registration, Get Out the Vote drives, and distribution or publication of voter guides … (as long as they are conducted in a nonpartisan manner).

To get some thinking about how Whitties can be involved in the electoral process, whether or not they are voting in Walla Walla, I reached out to Jonathan Becker ’26, Co-President of Whitman Votes. He responded: “Here is what I think might be important to include:

• In Washington State, ballots must be postmarked or turned into an election drop box no later than November 7th. Rules vary by state, so students should check the rules in the state in which they are registered.
• Students living in residence halls must put their residence address as the address of their residence hall (see document attached), but should put 280 Boyer Avenue as their mailing address. Some students make this mistake and thus do not receive a ballot.
• Ballot dropoff locations in Walla Walla can be found here
• October 26th is national vote early day”

He emphasized that there are many ways that students can make sure their voices are heard in the political system. Expanding on this invitation, I interviewed Jessica Chairez, MPH, Assistant Director of Community Engagement at Pitzer College where she oversees an extraordinary range of voting initiatives including National Voter Registration Day, Grassroots Organizing Training, National Voter Education Week, and others. Jessica was at Whitman last week as part of the national Project Pericles civic engagement convening and she shared this suggestion for Whitman students who want to get involved in electoral work: “Think outside of the box from partisan politics. Think of alternative parties and movements as ways to be engaged. Don’t get stuck in status quo. There are two big parties but you can use your influence in other ways, too.”

More specifically, Whitman students and other community members may want to, in the words of Delia Gutierrez, “welcome” Latino households to participate in future elections.

This will take some intention.

Mary Lopez told me, “Whitman students can organize and talk to people and build relationships and that’s the only way that you’re going to make change. That’s the best way to work with Latinos. You have to talk with them. Instant messaging can work because it’s quick. Email is not a good way. People are working all day and can’t get a break to go look at email. The best way is to go talk with people! Then they can trust you.”

I wish everyone an engaged election system, wherever you vote and whomever you vote for. May the best candidates win!

Finally, besides voting, another way that many people participate in American life is to serve in the military and so in our next column we’ll learn about how Walla Walla supports veterans who have risked their lives to protect the right to vote (among other privileges of citizenship).