Washington

Any registered voter may vote by absentee ballot. You do not need to be ill or "absent" to be an absentee voter.

You may request an absentee ballot as early as 90 days before an election. (No absentee ballots are issued on election day except to a voter who is a resident of a health care facility). The request for an absentee ballot must be made to your county auditor or elections department. You can also fill out an absentee ballot request for here.

Even though Washington is a vote by mail state, you can still vote in person on or before Election Day. Each county will have a voting center, which will be open during business hours beginning 18 days before the election and ending at 8pm on Election Day. You can find your voting center here.

You are a Military or Overseas voter if you are in uniformed services, living overseas OR a spouse or dependant of a uniformed services voter. To get registered and vote, you can utilize Overseas Vote Foundation.

If you have additional questions about elections and voting overseas you can use our state specific elections official directory or contact the Overseas Vote Foundation.

Information on local, state and federal candidates and ballot measures may be available here.

To see a list of available races, visit the race index.

To be eligible to vote in Washington you must be:

For information on federal campaign contributions, please visit Open Secrets.

For information on campaign contributions, please go to your state's site.

To verify your voter registration status, please use your state's voter verification tool.

Federal law requires that every voting center have a voting system that is accessible to all individuals with disabilities. The law requires that the system provide individuals with disabilities the same opportunity to vote privately and independently as other voters. When possible, the county auditor must use voting centers that are accessible to all voters. In instances where a voting center does not meet accessibility standards, additional assistance must be available. The accessibility standards include:

Washington is a mail in ballot state. The public may observe the processing of mail ballots. You may contact your County Auditor to arrange times to observe. Ballots are tabulated on optical scan and digital scan tabulating equipment. The equipment must be able to determine the ballot format for every ballot. Bar codes on each ballot allow the tabulation equipment to immediately determine the ballot format of that ballot, which allows the equipment to correctly read the ballot.