Candidate filing for local offices starts Monday.
Filing online or in person at the county auditor’s office begins at 9 a.m. May 11, and ends at 4 p.m. Friday, May 15.
Candidates file on line by reaching the Snohomish County elections web site at snohomishcountywa.gov/224/Elections-Voter-Registration and clicking on the “candidate filing” link.
All candidates must pay their filing fees by the end of the filing week. The filing fee is 1 percent of a position’s annual salary. Unpaid positions, like those on school boards, fire commissions, utility district boards, port commissions and the county charter review commission, have no filing fee.
Offices on 2015 ballots include the mayor of Edmonds, the Edmonds Municipal Court judge, five positions on the Edmonds City Council, four positions each on the Brier and Lynnwood city councils, three places on the Mountlake Terrace City Council, two positions on the Woodway Town Council, four positions on the Edmonds School Board, two positions on the Fire District 1 Board, two positions each on the Alderwood Water and Wastewater District and Ronald Wastewater District boards, one position on the Olympic View Water District board, two positions on the Hospital District 2 Board, two positions on the Edmonds Port Commission; the positions of county executive, county assessor, county auditor, county clerk, county sheriff and county treasurer; the County Council District 3 seat that Democrat Stephanie Wright now holds; and three seats on the Snohomish County charter review commission from each county council district.
County executive and county council are the only partisan positions. All others are non-partisan.
The partisan positions appear on both the Aug. 4 primary ballot and Nov. 3 general-election ballot. The top two primary vote getters qualify for the November ballot, but state law requires all partisan offices to appear in both the primary and the general election even where there are only one or two candidates.
Most non-partisan positions appear in the primary only if three or more candidates file, requiring the primary to narrow the field to two for November. Non-partisan offices with only one or two candidates appear only on the November ballot.
Candidates for the charter-review commission, which meets one year out of every 10, appear only on the November ballot, where voters in each district select three candidates from whatever number file.
Candidates can file by mail on forms available online as long as the filing material reaches the auditor’s office by Friday. County Elections Manager Garth Fell warns that these candidates lose the control over filing information that online and in-person filers have.
Candidates file in person at the auditor’s office in Everett. In-office filers get instructions on using an in-house computer.
The county determines ballot positions for the August primary by a lot draw after filing week. That draw also determines November ballot order for offices that don’t have a primary.
Evan Smith can be reached at schsmith@frontier.com.
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