Today: In Seattle, Katie Wilson's success with late-counted and late-arriving ballots is likely going to elect her Mayor. Also today: The Supreme Court is taking up a challenge to the legality of late-arriving ballots: www.seattletimes.com/nation-world...

Honestly pretty hard to imagine a path for the Mayor even with such a tiny lead - cured ballots skew much younger than the general electorate. Probably can't call it yet, but effectively close to over imo.

I always enjoy the people who when you show them one graph, they ask for a different one, then you show them that and they ask for a different one. Eventually need to do 4 hours of data cleaning to give a 300 follower rando the 18th graph that will show what is REALLY going on.

As an often-late voter, I do not want things to change out of self-interest. However, we could totally change the system to require ballot arrival before election day (this is common in absentee systems outside the West Coast).

Wilson should make up the gap here - but the eventual margin is likely to be smaller than the number of signature-challenged ballots (there are 2,053 according to King County). We may yet be in the Land of Lawyers.

gonna just use this as a plug for actual LOCAL journalists—human beings who are familiar with local elections, as opposed to algorithmic betting machines that can and do get basic things wrong

Yeah - if this latest batch just still doesn’t include down boxes, Katie Wilson definitely the favored candidate here.

This isn’t the margin she needs, but it is enough to keep anyone from calling this one anytime soon. Tomorrow’s batch should say a lot. If she still isn’t hitting her target, the path will narrow fast.

Katie Wilson came in at 46.21% on election night in the Primary. Today, she’s at 46.18%. She finished with 50.75%. It’s a very, very thin margin - but at this point I’d rather be Wilson.

Wow. This will be a very close finish. In Sawant’s (in)famous recall election, she was behind 6.2 points on election night, ultimately winning by 0.8pts.

Trying to get these results feels like buying concert tickets

Interesting vote from Mamdani here to maintain off-year local elections in NYC. Seattle progressives have long supported even-year elections for the sake of turnout.

This story is interesting. I feel like the money from her parents probably should have been the headline, given that Wilson is 43. Feelings here are nuanced, on one hand I do think grandparents really should be helping w/ young kids, but her husband doesn't have a job? Why do they need childcare?

President Trump may want to cut more trees in our National Forests, but the "One Big Beautiful Bill" guarantees those new revenues won't be seen by Washington's logging communities. Read my latest below: open.substack.com/pub/esexto/p...

🗳️☑️ Our election endorsements are live! See the full results & questionnaire responses here: seattleyimby.org/voter-guide/... Mayor: @wilsonforseattle.bsky.social District 2: Eddie Lin District 8: @alexis4seattle.bsky.social Time to go knock on some doors! 👏

Shame that some of the other NC reductions have passed, but the Wedgwood and Bryant amendments were also just pitifully poor process. There was not even a veneer of a justification. Very glad to see them fail today.

Rivera's amendment to shrink the Bryant neighborhood center is the first to fail, with Rinck, Strauss, and Juarez voting no and Nelson and Hollingsworth abstaining.

It is not too late to tell City Council we want more housing. Sign the Seattle YIMBY petition to the Council supporting what we think are the best amendments. The more signatures the greater impact it will have. And send to your friends. actionnetwork.org/petitions/4f...

The Comprehensive Plan is a difficult agenda item for all parties involved. Unfortunately, Councilmember Rivera's Amendment for the Bryant NC, #39, misses the mark. This amendment removes parcels with already-existing apartment buildings, and replaces those parcels with the Ronald McDonald House.

Build 👏🏼more 👏🏼 housing 👏🏼

I’m earnestly not one of the people who is always demanding drivers in accidents face criminal penalties, but this is just egregious. The driver ran a red light, crashed into a beloved local restaurant, and hospitalized 3 people. They weren’t arrested. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Really incredible to see such a resounding win from Zohran Mamdani. He brought an open-minded, energetic approach to his campaign. I hope he continues to learn on policy as Mayor, and inspires other candidates to focus on the issues young voters care about, and to use the media they actually see.

NIMBYs are unfortunately once again organizing to oppose housing in Seattle. Councilmembers should avoid unrepresentative samples of public opinion (like Change.org petitions and public comment) and look instead to scientific polling. Seattleites want housing - even in their own neighborhoods:

Two major Seattle-area hearings today starting in about 5 minutes: Seattle City Council is voting on legislation to implement HB 1110: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqPV... King County is seeking a Preliminary Injunction in its suit against HUD: www.youtube.com/live/dpRH_KZ...

Yes, Tree Action Seattle, if you ignore the meeting where significantly more people spoke, you did have a majority (52%) of speakers. I think it would be quite silly, though, to make a decision based on 5 speakers at a single council meeting!

By my count, here is the final count for the public hearing today: 54 comments from NIMBYs 49 comments from YIMBYs Total 2025 public hearing comment so far: 138 comments from YIMBYs 129 comments from NIMBYs

After 60 speakers, pro-housing, urbanist speakers are leading 31-29 over the voices asking for greater setbacks.

The morning virtual hearing had a lot of NIMBY anti housing testimony. The hearing slated for 4pm tonight will need some pro housing turnout. Feel free to be compassionate and/or very funny! Good humor here goes a long way!

The message is clear: no poison pills to our housing plan! Instead, we want improvements that will make it faster and cheaper to build more homes.

While the initial slew of commenters maybe even had a slight Urbanist skew, many of the later commenters have been endorsing amendments to increase setbacks and undermine HB 1110. Will be important for anyone interested in a bold comprehensive plan to come to this afternoon's public hearing.

The story is fine and the prescriptions are worthwhile, but the buried lede here is that Washington and Oregon are at 3rd and 5th respectively in terms of the proportion of their grids running on renewable energy. Washington in particular ranks only behind Texas for *total* renewable production!

New from me: Income Taxes in Washington State - Touching the Third Rail This piece is a deeper look into income taxation in Washington, the many failed attempts to levy a tax, and some of the political outlook. Please share - more like this coming soon! open.substack.com/pub/esexto/p...

The Seattle Chamber of Commerce's April Index poll is out, and it shows significant pro-housing sentiment: 59% see updating zoning laws and as important 61% agree that growth has been positive in their area 74% support streamlining permitting 66% agree that building more housing will lower costs

Seattle has now released a map of Neighborhood Residential areas (shown here in purple) that will be exempted from parking requirements in the legislation required to be passed to comply with HB 1110:

Final count from a group chat I'm in: 89 pro housing 75 opposed to housing

A speaker just now at the Comp Plan hearing really just attested that apartments should remain banned in Bryant because new residents would not be able to walk to access goods and services. I had to check a map to make sure I wasn't misremembering how close Bryant is to University Village.

This upzone is a 5-minute walk from not 1, not 2, not 3, or even 4 bus routes. It is a 5 minute walk from SIX bus routes: 31, 32, 45, 65, 67 and 75.

In 2024 NAEP data, 4th graders in Washington performed worse in math than 4th graders in Mississippi. Mississippi averaged 239, with Washington at 238. In 2013, Washington was a 246, with Mississippi at 231. A 15-point gap is gone, and students in Washington are performing worse than a decade ago.